Critical minerals, critical failures: Victoria sacrificing farms, water and public money

Victoria’s rush for critical minerals is leaving poisoned land, gutted regulators and taxpayers stuck with the bill. Tracey Anton reports.

WE ALL KNOW the Victorian Labor Government is bleeding money. But we need to seriously question how both State Labor and the Coalition’s conscious avoidance of mining pollution, past, present and future, is destroying our economic future with the unlawful destruction of the land we farm, the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Fiduciary responsibility under the Allan Labor government and the current Minister for Resources has all but disappeared in pursuit of a fictional payday.

But what’s coming in 2027 for mining reform is worse, with the same escape routes using the same regulators who have failed us in the past.

Deputy Leader of the Victorian Greens, Sarah Mansfield, sums it up perfectly:

“...the duty for mining companies to self-assess the risks of their projects, the risks that they pose to the environment, and minimise these risks without public scrutiny is highly flawed.”

Adding insult is taxpayers footing the bill to fix the unfixable while funding miners to create more wanton destruction and toxic waste with bonus radiation in the dust and water under the Critical Minerals Roadmap.

The roadmap is a miner’s wet dream devoid of accountability while fleecing Australians all under the authority of the Earth Resources Regulator (E.R.R.) and successive mining ministers.

At most mining locations, the company will extract millions of tonnes of saline groundwater that will sit in above ground storages and holding toxic hazards and radioactive tailings dumps on once productive farmland.

If Woodvale’s arsenic ponds were licensed to receive 165 tonnes of arsenic over its active life, wouldn’t that trigger a management plan by EPA? Clearly not.

Under E.R.R. direction (industry tutelage), the Government deems it acceptable to approve toxic waste discharges to waterways or inject into local groundwater. Better still, a miner can bulldoze their toxic waste heaps by moving one leach stack, for example, containing cyanide into the tailings pit that also contains cyanide plus antimony and arsenic to name a few nasties and then vegetate. A cheap rehabilitation option for the miners but a financial nightmare of the Government’s own doing.

This is why E.R.R. was called out by the Victorian Auditor General in 2020, given the heads up by a community member about serious accounting discrepancies of missing bond monies producing a report that tore E.R.R. to shreds oninsufficient rehabilitation bonds and conflicts of interest.

It was E.R.R.’s memoranda of understandings (MoU) with other co-regulators that prove the hypocrisy and superiority of mining and its all-consuming power over less prioritised resources like water to be exploited by mining corporates because money speaks volumes for a desperate government.

These MoUs are why the Minsters for Water, Environment and WorkSafe are subservient to mining and why our water regulators and agencies have undue political influence imposed on them covering up mining’s woeful legacies.

According to the Victorian Auditor-General's Office (VAGO) in 2020:

‘The 2016 Parliamentary Independent Inquiry into the EPA... noted that E.R.R. had not regulated the environmental and public health risks associated with mining operations to the same level as other industries with similar environmental risk profiles.’

This is state sanctioned incompetence, gutless agencies beholding to mining’s regulatory capture, yet are the same regulators that will be managing compliance under the new regime.

Bring in Resources Victoria, the one entity with too much power, running unchecked over our farmland, businesses and water while holding the same undeserved authority and decision-making of the first Department of Mines created in 1860.

They have taken charge of resources and mining reform which now means the new so-called mining boom for critical minerals is based on decades of deliberately hidden complications that are, conveniently, managed by the colluding government masses.

It comes as no surprise Resources Victoria had to act recently charging the operators of the Costerfield gold and antimony mine for incorrectly storing mining waste material, known as tailings even after the Resources Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio's minerals road map notes Costerfield as having a small aboveground footprint while pushing mineral sands mining as low-impact activity which is a flagrant fabrication.

We can’t ignore the fact community had the foresight years ago this was going to happen and why our collective groups like the Alliance for Responsible Mining Regulation (ARMA), forced to do the heavy lifting: exposing the deceit, coverups and sheer incompetence and wilful blindness of our government departments and agencies tasked with regulating mining and minimising the risks.

Approval processes, dismissive of those with years of expertise should not be the enabler of destructive mining. Just because there is an alternative subsurface resource doesn’t mean there is a right to destroy the surface productive land which is proven to provide a greater regional economic boost.

Kalbar, now known as Gippsland Critical Minerals (GCM) is a classic example. The Planning Minister knocked back their EES application at Fingerboards, East Gippsland on significant environment grounds due to site topography and closely adjoined veggie industry. GCM resubmitted a new application with the Minister’s delegate from Resources Victoria using her ‘discretionary considerations’ to approve a new retention licence.

This is just interpreting a dubious criteria system to justify decisions that best serve their masters' objectives for a predetermined outcome no matter what the impact to the environment or public health.

While documents disappear and historical evidence is obliterated online, we know the past and see the present to predict what our future mining legacies will be. But can Victoria afford to lose more productive farmland and continue to hide the hideous volumes of toxic wastewater?

So, it is not surprising to find treasury coffers are bleeding taxpayer monies to pay for the minimal E.R.R. efforts to regulate who, protect what and rehabilitate where?

According to VAGO:

Lack of rehabilitation bonds

According to available E.R.R. data, 578 mining and quarry sites have no rehabilitation bonds. 

Bring in mining’s powerful industry lobby group, Minerals Council Australia and their Victorian division (MCA). 

MCA would have you believe Victoria’s billion-dollar minerals industry is making a difference in the regions. However, anything they say about how much mining contributes to the economy can be countered with what is claimable for tax, grants given from taxpayer monies, environmental impacts to water quantity/quality, health impacts, lack of rehabilitation, abandoned and legacy mines with significant tailings burdens — outright deception.

A full cost-benefit analysis would disclose the significant public health impacts among mine workers and mining-exposed communities. Of course, section 21-23 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 would mean WorkSafe Victoria would need to be a touch more proactive under new reform to protect employee and exposed community health. As for the Department of Health, it needs to get its head out of its Minister’s rear end to manage critical minerals radioactive waste and flood threats.

The claim that mining provides direct and indirect wealth to Victorian regions is debatable, but with $20 billion in gross value of production (GVAP) and $20.1 billion in food/fibre exports in recent years (around 2022-24), agriculture is the real economic powerhouse in Victoria, something which the Government crows about but does little to protect.

MCA Victoria state mining uses less than 0.2 per cent of Victoria’s land but their insidious footprint reaches far and wide etched permanently across the landscape. This is either productive land lost to food production forever or quality assurance risks from the toxic dust that cannot be controlled even though Resources Victoria and co appear to believe magic dust suppression tent exists.

Consequently, is mining able to achieve the State Government’s objective for mega dollars into Treasury?

The Government counts on fees to cover costs but a review by Deloitte exposed more accounting mismanagement.

Deloitte recommended some serious fee increases for the 2025-26 financial year, however, the actual fees listed are more like a CPI increase rather than Deloitte’s suggested 234 per cent increase needed to cover the additional $13.7 million per year required. Clearly, taxpayers are making up the shortfall.

Another input to Treasury is rent fees from miners that are unlawful.

This was bought to the attention of the mining warden and a government lawyer by an astute law student because the Government cannot legally lease land it does not own or charge rent for it unless it has title to it or has a landowner agreement to rent the land at a certain rate; in other words, procurement processes.

Land access agreement provides financial compensation from the mining company whereas land rental fees, being a different contract, should be payable to the landholder, not the government. Governments via the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 (MRSDA), empower mining companies to force landowners to agree to sign land access agreements.

Any refusals are taken to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) which only has the power to determine the amount of compensation. This way, the Government uses the MRSDA to cunningly gain landholder’s consent.

Southwest Victoria’s Stavely Arc project highlights how the Government has no scruples assisting miners financially at the same time as worded-up lawyers provide land access agreement advice to landholders. Serious conflicts of interest to provide lawyers with contractual templates ‘to help a landholders sign away their rights’, so mining companies can compulsorily hold right of tenure over their land.

According to the Victorian Government's Mineral Resources Strategy 2018-2023:

‘Training for local legal practitioners within the Stavely initiative area to equip them with the right information and boost their capabilities around land access, and help local landholders in their discussions about land access with explorers.’

Resources Victoria, as government agent, crosses the boundaries in common and tax, land, planning and environment law and lastly, administrative law — abuse of power and due process.

Now, the public must deal with budget shortfalls, having the trusted the Mine Land Rehabilitation Authority (MLRA) located in Gippsland, with its open door policy, lose its independence and functional activities being absorbed into Resource Victoria with the Silver Review.

This is at a critical time where MLRA will work on declaring new and existing mines to protect taxpayers from absorbing even more mining costs. The Woodvale arsenic ponds didn’t even meet the criteria, just subjective interpretation of what constitutes a risk by unskilled mining bureaucrats.

While Resources Victoria is strengthening oversight to boost community confidence in the management of mining sites, the prevention of avoiding, minimising and mitigating risks starts with the actual licence approvals process.

Given any form of mine rehabilitation is not E.R.R.’s strength, the most recent approval of the 1,534 hectare Goschen Mineral Sands and Rare Earths Project south of Swan Hill should have been classified as a declared mine from the start due to tailings dam infrastructure at the least. Now we ask, at what point does Minister D’Amrosio make that decision?

The Victorian Government thinks it can mine its way out of bankruptcy. Instead, it is bankrupting our environmental assets, our farmers and rural communities.

You can follow Tracey Anton on Twitter @COM_TraceyA, on her blog Community Over Mining or on Facebook.