Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

Despite the confected outrage you hear in this chamber quite often, there are a number of reasons behind the coalition's introduction of this private senator's bill, the Blayney Gold Mine Bill 2024. Most of all, we hope a sufficient number of senators might see common sense and join us to overturn an utterly disgraceful decision made by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, on 13 August 2024. That decision, which was to unilaterally uphold an Indigenous cultural heritage application under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, has now stopped all progress, as we know, on Regis Resources McPhillamys goldmine. I had the opportunity to visit Blayney, in New South Wales, the other week, and I can tell you that locals are very concerned with the current decision that has been made.

The bill provides an opportunity to reverse the effect of the declaration made by Ms Plibersek, and it goes further than that; it exempts the entirety of the more-than-2,000-hectare mine site from any similar declaration in the future. To date, Ms Plibersek has provided little to no information regarding the events that led to her decision being made or even the considerations she made in deciding to enforce a section 10 ruling over the tailings dam for the Regis McPhillamys goldmine. By the time Ms Plibersek's decision of 13 August was made, many aspects of Regis Resources' Blayney project were already underway and a significant investment of around $200 million had been made.

The mine would have delivered profound benefits and opportunities to the people of Blayney and the communities in the surrounding region, the state of New South Wales and, of course, our country as a whole. Over $200 million in royalties would have been collected for the New South Wales government to build and maintain hospitals, schools, roads and other public facilities. These are projects that the Greens seem to think just—poof!—come out of the air like magic. The project would have delivered around a thousand local jobs—again, they don't just come out of nowhere—and $1 billion in direct investment into Australia. It would also have delivered a number of job opportunities to local Indigenous people—but the Greens aren't interested in that either, and neither is this government apparently—resulting in social and economic empowerment of their communities. There's no interest in that coming from the government or their allies in the Greens.

The actions of the Minister for the Environment and Water have rendered the entire project unviable. Regis Resources have said that they do not currently have any viable alternative options, and the project will now cease indefinitely. The company has made it clear that it would take at least another five to 10 years to even develop an alternative tailings dam option. Those opposite would have you think that you can pluck another place out of the air just like that—it's simple! In any case, after that, another Labor environment minister could simply impose another section 10 decision on the alternative site.

The Prime Minister has shown extraordinary weakness on this matter too. Regis Resources wrote to him back in June this year, warning him that the project would have to be stopped if Ms Plibersek upheld the section 10 declaration. He failed to even respond to their concerns. Instead, he allowed his environment minister to go on her merry way and proceed with her detrimental decision.

Our resources sector makes an enormous social and economic contribution to Australia, and the government puts our country's best interests in jeopardy when they heighten our sovereign risk with decisions like this one. In this debate, Labor senators will presumably fall in behind Ms Plibersek's pathetic excuses that Regis Resources could easily shift the tailings dam to another location—we've heard that repeatedly—that former minister Ley once did something similar and that the potential risks of Blayney right now are akin to those at Juukan Gorge in 2020. Again, there is confected outrage.

These claims are false and have been discredited. Regis Resources have made it very clear that there are currently no viable alternative locations for their tailings dam. Ms Ley, when environment minister, did not personally scuttle a $1 billion project or cause $192 million in financial writedowns, nor did she cost a community nearly a thousand jobs. And, of course, it's ludicrous to compare what has been painstakingly considered and planned at Blayney with what happened at Juukan Gorge, but you'll hear those cries of confected outrage from those opposite.

Ms Plibersek's declaration needs to be reversed and the project needs to be reinstated to ensure the local community and close to a thousand prospective employees are not left behind during what are already difficult times in a Labor induced cost-of-living crisis. Tanya Plibersek's disastrous blocking—