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Changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act have been proposed after anti-coal activists were successful in having the 2014 approvals for Adani's $A16.5 billion Carmichael coal project in Queensland overturned earlier this month.
“The mining and exploration industry supports the federal government in standing up to green extremists gaming legislation to block mining development,” AMEC CEO Simon Bennison said.
“A number of groups have become quite sophisticated in law to game the EPBC Act.”
Bennison said proposed changes to the EPBC Act wouldn’t detract from Australia’s high environmental standards.
“Australia’s robust and extensive approval system is extremely extensive and onerous,” he said.
“Research has shown that it takes on average seven years to convert a discovery into an operating mine.”
Bennison warned that if action wasn’t taken now, activists would be targeting other commodities and states before too long.
“Vexatious objections by environmental extremists and anti-mining lobby groups are blatant attacks on the prosperity of Australian jobs and government revenue streams,” he said.
“AMEC is consistently advocating for streamlining approvals processes at all levels of government to create economic development, jobs and government revenue streams for the benefit of all Australians.
“Legislation should only allow those directly impacted by proposals to object.”
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott hit out at the tactics of the green movement in their “sustained campaign of harassment through the courts”
“I don't want any development – whether it's a mine or a building or a road – to go ahead if it doesn't meet the highest environmental standards, but once the tests have been applied, once the tests have been passed, the projects must be able to go ahead,” he said.
“What we've seen is again and again and again new fronts being opened, all of a sudden new issues being raised after the matter has seemingly been resolved and this is just unfair.”
