House debates

Monday, 19 June 2017

Constituency Statements

Mining Industry: Rehabilitation

10:45 am

Photo of Andrew LamingAndrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I want to highlight the significant economic opportunities that arise from rehabilitating old mine sites. There must be 1,500 around the world. It is fascinating that an Australian company is leading the way with the work at Century Mine up in the Gulf of Carpentaria. After 16 years of operation there by Century, there are large amounts of zinc residing in a tailings pond. They have a responsibility to rehabilitate this site, but now it can be done in not only an economically viable way but also in a way that is increasingly an economically valuable opportunity for secondary players who are experts.

One of these groups is Raging Bull. I want to talk about their work today. Those substantial recoverable zinc mineralisations are sitting in a two- by three-kilometre tailings dam about seven metres deep. It represents about 1,940,000 contained zinc tonnes. Part of the rehabilitation is to move that, remove zinc that should have been taken out in the first place but was not because of the emphasis on throughput rather than maximisation, and return it to the old pit and then encapsulate it. That will fulfil their obligations to rehabilitate the site. Of course back in the nineties the emphasis, as I said, was on throughput, so only about 74 per cent of the zinc was extracted at Century because they were making the most of high mineral prices at the time. But, with a secondary player like Century Bull, independent studies show that what we will see is that this is potentially a $6 billion resource of zinc. It is absolutely remarkable. In many cases, there may be other resources as well.

What is more important is that nearly every mine site in Australia has significant obligations through a bond to the respective governments, but where they are an Australian entity that is part of a global player and if that Australian entity has been liquidated then there is no way for the people to get rehabilitation of that site. That is a large burden on the taxpayer, so we want this rehabilitation occurring as soon as possible, not extending out decades. In Century, of course, there is the mine site; there is a flotation processing plant; there is a large port facility at Karumba, which the mining company owns; there are large cattle properties; there is an underground slurry pipeline; there is the pastoral holding—it is all there to be maximised, and this is work for local Indigenous communities in the area for decades, rather than it all being dismantled now.

Its head office will be in my electorate in Capalaba, which obviously I am very excited about. This has been an MMG-Century Bull partnership, which shows that there are massive resources available in tailings deposits. It is leading the way as a harbinger for other opportunities around the world, and I wish them well in paying down this obligation to the government, rehabilitating this two- by three-kilometre site and, obviously, giving Australia yet another export product to take to the world. I congratulate both of those parties for coming to an economically sensible, if not a highly lucrative agreement, for the benefit of those who live in the Doomadgee and Karumba area.