Queensland Shadow Minister for Natural Resources Jeff Seeney

Mines Minister Must Do More Than Talk Tough

Victor P Taffa

BLIGH Labor Government Mines Minister Stephen Robertson needs to do much more to manage environmental issues in the mining and gas industries than turn up to meetings talking tough, the State Opposition said today.

Queensland Shadow Minister for Natural Resources, Mines & Energy Jeff Seeney said it wasn’t good enough for the Minister to ride into Kingaroy talking tough about the Cougar Energy coal gasification trial.

“There needs to be proper monitoring of all mining and gas activities especially in closely settled areas.” Mr. Seeney said.

“The Minister needs to ensure there are enough Departmental officers in the field to properly monitor all of the mining projects that are springing up across regional Queensland.”

Mr. Seeney said he pursued the issue at Estimates last week after hearing for some time that the Department didn’t have anywhere near enough staff on the ground to supervise and monitor the mining boom.

“The Bligh Government is very keen to employ large numbers of people to try to catch farmers knocking over Brigalow trees, but they’ve been reluctant to ensure the same level of scrutiny is applied to mining operations.”

“This coal-to-gas project at Kingaroy was a trial of a new technology that had raised considerable concern … it should have been monitored more closely than most other mining projects.” Mr. Seeney said.

“The fact that there was no Departmental officers monitoring this trial site raises questions about what monitoring the Department is doing in other areas.”

“Under Labor, the Department of Mines and Energy and the Department of Natural resources have been run down and starved of resources year after year.”

“There are now serious questions about whether these Departments have the people with the skills to properly administer the mining boom.” Mr. Seeney said.