Fears Queenslanders could be forced to pay for mine cleanup as LNP reviews environmental ‘red tape’

Mining minister Dale Last says the state has an ‘enormous opportunity’ to become a global leader in critical minerals

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Queenslanders are being warned they could be left to pay for the clean up of abandoned mines if rehabilitation laws are weakened, after the state government announced a bid to cut environmental “red tape” for resources companies.

The state’s treasurer, David Janetzki, and the mining minister, Dale Last, this week announced a review of a scheme that requires resources companies to provide surety to cover remediation and rehabilitation costs when mines close.

Last said the review would ensure the scheme, introduced in 2019, remained “fit for purpose” and supported “responsible resources development across Queensland without constraining investment”.

“The financial provisioning scheme has been one of the top three issues smaller mining companies and explorers continue to raise with me,” Last said.

“Queensland has an enormous opportunity to become a global leader in critical minerals and the Crisafulli government is committed to cutting red tape to unlock the next wave of investment.”

Janetzki said the review would “get the balance right between the highest environmental standards for rehabilitation and remediation” and “the right investment settings for junior miners and explorers to make a contribution to mining activity”.

But the Lock the Gate Alliance’s central Queensland coordinator, Claire Gronow, said smaller miners were those most at risk of “walking away and leaving an un-rehabilitated mine site”.

Gronow said environmental campaigners and primary producers already had “big concerns” about a trend of “selling down”, in which larger miners were exiting coalmines – not by closing and rehabilitating them but offloading them to smaller companies.

These companies, often holding a portfolio of just coalmines and which are sometimes foreign owned, were particularly exposed to fluctuations and volatilities in the industry.

“You are not going to be able to get the money out of them after they walk away,” Gronow said.

“They can put a mine into care and maintenance and then the company just disappears into a puff of smoke”.

Gronow said a rehabilitation bond might be “off putting” for smaller miners. But she said that, if a company could not provide financial security to cover those costs, “should it really be in the business?”

In the absence of an adequate rehabilitation bond, Gronow said mining companies could “take the profit and disappear”.

“In which case, we, ordinary Queenslanders, bear that legacy,” she said. “And that legacy is not just a scar in the ground. It’s leeching contaminants into our waterways, into our Great Barrier Reef, those sorts of things, that will go on for generations.”

As Gronow calls on the government not to water down the financial provisioning scheme, others are demanding it beef up obligations on miners towards neighbouring land owners.

Trish Goodwin is a cattle farmer near the tiny town of Bluff in the central Queensland highlands, upon whose property sits most of the 1,100ha open cut Bluff coalmine.

Created before the current mine rehabilitation regulations were enforced, Bluff was mothballed in late 2023 after its owner went into receivership.

On Wednesday, Goodwin was still wondering who was responsible for a list of what she says are unmet obligations to her for the destruction of her land and assets, including road access and communication lines to her home.

“In my case, well who is gonna pay for that?” she said. “This mine keeps going into receivership, more times than I have bacon and eggs for breakfast”.

The Queensland Resources Council’s chief executive, Janette Hewson, said the mining industry was looking forward to working with the government on its review.

“The [QRC] welcomes the Queensland government’s review of the financial provisioning scheme which in its current form is an impediment to new investment in the resources sector.”

The amount of un-rehabilitated mined land in Queensland grew 12% from 2019 to 2024, and now covers more than 223,6841ha.