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Public Reporting

By on April 5, 2016

DR ELIZABETH GIBSON, General Manager of the CMPA provides the following comments supplied by the CMPA on the “Implementation Plan for Public Reporting”.

The Resources Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 has amended the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 (“Act”) to introduce public reporting of work carried out under licences and extractive industry work authorities (EIWAs).

The amending provisions are said to improve public transparency in the earth resources sector, by ensuring communities are well informed on significant mining and quarrying activities.

The purpose of the Earth Resources Regulation implementation plan, which CMPA commented on, is to set out the steps to be taken to implement the new public reporting requirements.

The following sets out CMPA’s response.

The criteria have not yet been set for the identification of extractive industries for reporting other than the use of “significant mining and quarrying activities”. This is seen as a deficiency in the implementation plan.

The public reporting should be:

  • limited to those identified by a technically competent, unbiased, professional person against known selection criteria;
  • not all encompassing regarding the criteria for reporting;
  • not duplicate any other reporting and
  • not include commercial information.

In “Matters for reporting”, the first three dot points are repetitive and hence confusing.

Steps 13 and 21 assumes the Work Authority holder has a website when this may not be the case.

The CMPA would like further consultation on:

  • the implementation plan;
  • the selection criteria for those Work Authorities required to publically report prior to their selection and
  • any revisions subsequently proposed for the 2015-2016 reporting year.

Whilst CMPA understands the intention behind the requirement for public reporting, it is yet another impost on the extractive industry that is already struggling under the costs of ever increasing and overwhelming legislative requirements of which many have been introduced due to mine and coal mine issues.

CMPA is of the firm view that the extractive industry remain separate from mines and coal mines in regulation due to the extractive industry’s different and lower risk profile.

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