By Lisa Macdonald
Taking the next step in its campaign to guarantee unimpeded access for mining corporations to all areas of Australia, federal environment minister Senator Robert Hill made it clear last week that the Coalition is prepared to allow mining in wilderness areas.
A recent national Roy Morgan poll conducted for the Australian Heritage Commission found that 81% of respondents did not support mining in wilderness areas.
Speaking at the September 25 launch of the Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 1995, federal resources minister Senator Warwick Parer said that existing environment legislation must be rewritten so that "Resource development [which is] a temporary land use could coexist with other activities".
Parer condemned the environmental impact statement process as "inefficient" and a blockage to the exploitation of vast mineral deposits. In response, Senator Hill told the media that the government was looking at ways to "improve" the process.
These latest statements follow a failed attempt by the government five months ago to exempt mining companies from Commonwealth environment impact studies. Legislation it introduced on May 1 to abolish export licence controls over all minerals except uranium would have removed the legal trigger requiring mining companies to conduct an EIS.
That legislation was blocked by the opposition parties in the Senate, but on July 4 Parer said that the government would continue attempts to abolish export controls. In the same speech, he signalled that the government would also move to allow mining in national parks, remove "regulatory impediments", promote multiple land use and ensure that forest reserves are still open to mining.
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald six weeks later, Hill revealed the government's plans to merge and rationalise its three main environmental agencies (Australian Nature Conservation Agency, Commonwealth Environment Protection Agency and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) so as to "ensure his bureaucrats put the government's interests first".
His further statement last week that the government will be "reviewing all its environmental legislation", indicates that all of the anti-environment plans flagged by Parer in July are well in train.