By Anna Creegan, Rachel Lee and Calvin Rokich
On 21 September 2022 the WA Government tabled its response (Response) to the ‘Enough is Enough’ report (Report) made by the Western Australian Parliament’s Community Development and Justice Standing Committee following the Inquiry into sexual harassment against women in the FIFO mining industry (Inquiry). Continue reading
By Jay Leary, Geoff Kerrigan and Annabel Beech
The recent decision coming out of the Warden’s Court of Western Australia – True Fella Pty Ltd v Pantoro South Pty Ltd [2022] WAMW 19 (True Fella) – has attracted attention across the WA mining sector. Continue reading
The High Court of Australia has dismissed Clive Palmer’s challenge against the State of Western Australia’s border closures, upholding their validity. The Court has not yet released its reasons, which will follow separately.
On 11 October 2019 the Western Australian government announced that it will introduce a new royalty regime for lithium producers in the form of a 5% feedstock royalty rate for lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate where those are the first products sold and the feedstock is spodumene concentrate.
The announcement comes after a recent review into lithium royalties as part of the government’s Future Battery Industry Strategy and aims to encourage downstream processing of lithium concentrate in WA.
As we previously reported1, a consequence of the High Court of Australia’s decision in Forrest & Forrest Pty Ltd v Wilson2 is unexpected and unhelpful uncertainty regarding the validity of the grant of certain mining leases in Western Australia.
The State Government and the Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) are continuing to assess an appropriate legislative fix for the issues arising out of the High Court’s decision. Although this assessment is ongoing, the DMP has publicly indicated that the legislative fix will not cover mining lease applications which (in DMP’s opinion) are affected by the High Court’s decision. Affected applicants will be required to re-submit new mining lease applications that comply with the relevant requirements of the Mining Act. The DMP has not indicated (at this stage) whether the same approach will be taken for other applications for mining tenure which have similar document lodgement requirements.
In its recent decision in Forrest & Forrest v Wilson [2017] HCA 30, the High Court held that a failure to strictly comply with the technical lodgements requirements of the Mining Act 1978 (WA) (Mining Act) invalidated a decision of the Mining Warden to recommend that a number of mining leases be granted. This overturned two decisions of the Western Australia Supreme Court (at hearing and on appeal) which reached an opposite conclusion.
It also departed from the generally understood position that a mining lease, once granted, conferred on the holder an ‘indefeasible’ mining title that cannot be the subject of subsequent legal challenge on the basis that the tenement was invalidly granted.
