Farmers right to challenge miners 'threatened'

27 Apr 2010, 8:18 pm   -   Source: AAP
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The right of NSW farmers to challenge mining giant BHP Billiton over exploratory digging on their properties is under threat from proposed legislation, the Greens
say.

The right of NSW farmers to challenge mining giant BHP Billiton over exploratory digging on their properties is under threat from proposed legislation, the Greens
say.

In March this year, Liverpool Plains farmers in the state's north won a NSW Supreme Court battle giving them more power to refuse miners access to their properties if access agreements are breached.

A new bill introduced in state parliament on Tuesday could reverse this decision, the NSW Greens say.

"The government is again doing the bidding of the coal industry by validating the current questionable access arrangements for mining companies," Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said in a statement on Tuesday.

"BHP Billiton, hand in hand with the Minerals Council, must have burnt a path to the government's door after Justice Schmidt of the Supreme Court ruled against them."

Caroona Coal Action Group spokesman Timothy Duddy says the implications of the Mining and Petroleum Legislation Amendment Bill are vast.

"This is a very ill-thought Act by the NSW government to try and facilitate mining at all costs," he told AAP.

"(It shows) that they don't respect any other landholder, any other user of any land, other than the miner."

If the decision is reversed, miners won't have to notify all those with a financial interest in the property of exploratory mining plans, he says.

"If, for instance, you have an inter-generational transfer of a property where a mortgage is owed to your father, your father wouldn't have to be consulted on that property," Mr Duddy said.

He says another part of the Supreme Court ruling, to force miners to describe their intended methods of exploratory works, is also under threat.

"(The Supreme Court decision) also meant that the access arrangements had to be descriptive, so the miners had to lay out their methods of exploration, and that's why we fought it in the first instance," he said.

The action group is lobbying against the bill.

"Our community would do whatever it has to do to ensure that the environment is properly protected," Mr Duddy said.


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