Earth Resources News

Earth Resources Regulation will be moving back to 1 Spring Street, Melbourne by the end of June 2015 to be collocated with other regulators in DEDJTR such as fisheries. Kylie White has been promoted to Deputy Secretary of Earth Resources Development. Kylie will be replaced by Ross McGowan (from fisheries) whose position will be Executive Director Earth Resources Regulation (John Mitas’s supervisor) and commenced on 2 February 2015. There were numerous other changes at the executive level, however, with John Mitas and below there have been no rearrangements as yet. The priorities for the Earth Resources Reform Steering Committee remain the same: implementation of Economic Development Infrastructure Committee Inquiry into greenfields mineral exploration and project development in Victoria – Government Response.

Risk based Work Plan form

Extractive and mining industry representatives were given a demonstration of the electronic risk based Work Plan form on 22 January 2015. The electronic form will be available in March 2015 with referrals to Councils and referral authorities being undertaken electronically.

It was proposed that Councils would not need to see the risk assessment only the controls to be put into place. There are still technical issues with the system, such as, only being able to load files up to 10MB. It is proposed that a Work Plan will be 5-10 pages long (not including attachments). A consolidated plan will be available to print out. The Freedom of information Act was discussed and the same provisos apply that did with the paper based system. However, when populating the electronic form (that is prior to submission to DEDJTR) the Government will have “constructive possession” of the information even though it is in draft form. All new Work Plans and variations will be required to be risk based after 31 December 2015.

Risk based Work Plans draft schedules

Phil Roberts, Acting Manager Legislation Reform, DEDJTR gave a presentation on the remaking of the Schedules to the Regulations to incorporate risk based Work Plans. The Earth Resources Regulator is collecting information on Work Plan costs to assist with the process.

Rehabilitation bond

The 2 track model (whereby meeting selection criteria reduces the bond by 25%) has been reaffirmed with the current Government. The review of the rehabilitation bond calculator will occur this year.