Mining

Lock the Gate Alliance has warned that a recently announced federal government review of current mining assessment regulation will further reduce regional communities’ ability to fight inappropriate and unwanted resource exploitation.

Federal resources minister Matt Canavan announced at the NSW Minerals Council conference on August 5 that the government had asked the Productivity Commission to hold a 12-month review into what he thinks is the over-regulation of the resources sector.

The Western Australian Labor government has announced it will lift the ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of underground geological structures this month. A statewide moratorium on fracking has been in place since September 2017.

Protesters rallied outside the Sydney CBD and Parramatta offices of multinational engineering corporation GHD on July 30. GHD was recently awarded the contract for the engineering design for Adani's huge coal mine slated for the Galilee Basin, in central Queensland.

Nearly 100 Malaysian environmental and civil society groups have demanded that Australia stop exerting "bullying" diplomatic pressure on Malaysia to accept half a million tonnes of toxic radioactive waste piled up at Australian corporate polluter Lynas’s rare-earth refinery in Gebeng, near the Malaysian city of Kuantan.

Two thousand people took over a major roadway in Brisbane on a Friday night, standing and sitting in. The action is likely to be the prelude to future disruption in the city if approval for the Adani coal mine is not withdrawn.

The rally first heard from a range of speakers, including Wangan and Jagalingou spokesperson Adrian Burragubba; MUA Qld state secretary Bob Carnegie; and organisers with University Students for Climate Action, Front-Line Action on Coal and others.

Clinton Fernandes, professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales, writes that “national security” encompasses the protection of the commercial interests of the few large private concerns that dominate Australia’s economy.

The Queensland Coordinator General has recommended Pembroke Resources' new Olive Downs coal project be allowed to leave three un-rehabilitated pit voids on the Isaac River flood plain after the mine closes.

The ruling by the NSW Land and Environment Court on February 8 to reject the Rocky Hill coalmine outside Gloucester is being felt beyond its local community and will have implications for human rights as well as climate change policy.

Hundreds of people gathered on northern Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter beaches to protest the resumption of seismic testing in early May.

About 500 protesters rallied outside federal parliament on February 12 under the slogan "Stop Adani - Climate action now!" 

A tailings dam owned by Brazilian iron ore producer Vale burst in Brumadinho in the state of Minas Gerais on January 25. This is the second of its tailings dams to burst in several years. Hundreds died and the devastation to local residents, water resources and biodiversity was immense.

The world’s biggest producer of iron ore, Vale, has again distanced itself from an ecological and workplace disaster of its own making, writes Pip Hinman.