Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The document I was taking note of is the McPhillamys gold mine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection (Kings Plains) Declaration 2024. It was an order the Senate agreed to some time ago—I think it was 12 September, as a matter of fact. The documents that we were seeking as a Senate, and that the Senate voted for as a majority, weren't provided to us. We had a letter telling us more time was needed.

In taking note of the documents before the Senate, as flimsy as they are, I will make a couple of points. Those documents point to the flimsy process the government went through in making the decision it did in relation to the McPhillamys gold mine. I want to remind the Senate and anyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be listening this afternoon that the McPhillamys gold mine, which would have created over 800 jobs in a small community in regional New South Wales, just outside of Orange, in Blayney, had received full state and federal environmental approval. There aren't many projects that manage to jump those hurdles and clear those hoops like this project did over nearly five years of hard work. The proponents of the mine, Regis Resources, in getting the project to this point, spent $192 million complying with every request, every regulation, every rule and every law, state and federal, and they got the big green tick from the New South Wales Labor government, the Minns government, who were fully supportive of this mine, and they even got EPBC Act approval too.

So what went wrong? We still don't know why it went wrong, but let me tell you what actually went wrong. Despite having full environmental and planning approval—