The Supreme Court of Tasmania has heard a challenge to a new mining lease granted to MMG for its Rosebury zinc, copper and lead mine in the Tarkine rainforest.
MMG is seeking to build a second tailings dam to support its operations, which has seen opposition from environmental activist group, the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF).
MMG currently holds a mining lease over the proposed site of the second tailings dam and was granted an additional mining lease over Helilog Road, the principal access route to the site.
It was this mining lease concerning Helilog Road – which was approved by then-Minister for Resources Guy Barnett in 2022 – that the Bob Brown Foundation challenged in court.
The road is used not only by MMG to access its operations, but also by protestors, media and the public to reach the sites.
BBF alleged – among other things – that the Minister’s decision to grant the lease was invalid because MMG already had the right to use Helilog Road, and that the Minister took irrelevant considerations into account, namely granting the lease for the purpose of thwarting protest activity.
In essence, BBF challenged the lease on the grounds that it was intended to block its right to protest.
But the Court disagreed, ruling that nothing in the law that precludes leases being used to prevent “inconvenient protest activity”.
“Members of the public have a right to protest,” Chief Justice Alan Blow said. “However, the Minister was not obliged to prefer the interests of protesters to those of MMG.”
The challenge was accordingly dismissed.
The proposed tailings dam has been locked in an existential battle for years. The project was initially approved by former Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley in January 2022, a decision BBF challenged in Federal Court. Justice Mark Moshinsky found that approval was invalid, stating that Minister Ley had failed to properly consider the threat that the tailings dam posed to a rare species of owl which lives in Tarkine rainforest.
Work on the tailings dam was subsequently brought to a standstill.
The final decision now rests with Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.