Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Once more the radical Left tail is wagging this dog of a government as we see their radical Left agenda, their anti-resources agenda at play. And this time you don't have to take it from those on this side of the chamber, we have it in writing as an ASX announcement.

Everyone who knows anything about the ASX and about company announcements on the ASX knows that these announcements are legalled to within an inch of their lives. They generally come across as completely anodyne, completely banal statements of fact. And yet this is what Regis Resources has had to say on the ASX just this morning about the section 10 cessation effectively closing their McPhillamys Gold Project in New South Wales. They've said:

Minister Plibersek has stated that this declaration "will not stop the mine". To the contrary, this decision does impact a critical area of the Project development site and means the Project is not viable.

A decision by Minister Plibersek on the pretext of Aboriginal cultural heritage has stopped this project of a great Western Australian mining company Regis Resources. This is the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, the debacle we saw in Western Australia, done by stealth by this Labor government. The blocking of this project will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of jobs in the town of Orange. And you see, once again, the Left outflanking the Labor Party, and them rushing to try to cover their Left flank politically, at the cost of every Australian.