Late last year, in an effort to boost the development of new mining projects, the Western Australian Government announced its intention to conduct a sweeping overhaul of its environmental permitting system.
Under the reforms, the state environment minister would be able to fast-track decisions on projects of ‘state significance’, while government approvals could run simultaneous to environmental permitting, rather than afterwards.
“Today’s announcement is a massive step forward to remove the green tape that has been holding back our industry and the state economy for years,” the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) CEO Warren Pearce said at the time.
But the debate over approval timelines, not just in WA but across Australia, has continued to swirl. So, almost a year since the WA Government proposed the permitting changes, have things improved?
The numbers
According to a report published in August by WA’s Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DEMIRS), a total of 2,868 mining environmental approval (MEA) applications were filed in 2023-24 — down 17.8% from the year before — 2,651 of which were finalised.
Likewise, 2,439 program of work applications were received, with 2,285 approved — 53% of which were within the target timeframe of 15 business days. On average, approvals took 16 business days to process, with an average end-to-end timeframe of 26 business days. This represents an increase from 11 days and 23 days, respectively, in 2022-23.
Of the 326 mining proposals received by DEMIRS, 250 were finalised. However, less than half — 42.4% — were completed within the target period of 30 business days. On average, mining proposals took 46 days to process, down from 51 days the year before.
Native vegetation clearing permit applications totalled 123 in 2023-24, with 117 approved. Of those, 67.5% were finalised within the target timeframe of 60 days, while the average was 65.4 days.
Notably, these timeframes do not account for ‘stop the clock’ events that force DEMIRS to temporarily pause the approvals process.
“When events occur outside of the direct control of DEMIRS, the ‘clock is stopped’ and the processing time is put on hold,” the report notes.
“That is, the time taken for these events, which are processes outside of DEMIRS, to be completed is not counted in the department’s processing time for assessment against the target timeframes.”
Such events can include requests for further information, the referral of applications to other agencies for advice, or waiting for tenure to be granted.
“Government departments that are tasked with approvals are often working as fast as they can, but in many cases they are under-resourced while dealing with a significant number of applications,” the AMEC’s Pearce tells Mining.com.au.
“Unnecessary duplication also exists between departments, and between the state and federal jurisdictions.”
Indeed, DEMIRS has acknowledged there are “factors that are impacting MEA assessment and approval timeframes”, and has pledged to pursue a number of reforms to ease the pressure.
One is the Fast Track Mining Approvals program, established to expand and improve the digital and spatial capability of all mining and petroleum environmental lodgements to DEMIRS, and to accelerate a number of assessment timeframes.
A key feature of the program is the implementation of ‘Resources Online’, which is expected to simplify the approval process by offering live guidance at the time of lodgement to ensure applications contain all the necessary information, thereby helping to reduce the prevalence of ‘stop the clock’ events.
“Exploration is essential to the development of future mines in WA and the Cook Government is committed to making the approvals process as efficient as possible,” WA Minister for Mines and Petroleum David Michael said in August.
“I am particularly proud of the contribution of the Exploration Incentive Scheme’s co-funded drilling program, which has already proven its success in supporting explorers to make several significant mineral discoveries across WA.”
The broader view
While WA — arguably the jewel in the crown that is Australia’s mining sector — makes for a good case study, Vancouver-based think tank the Fraser Institute offers a broader assessment.
As part of its Annual Survey of Mining Companies for 2023, the institute spoke to mining executives who had recently — within the last two years — applied for exploration permits in several jurisdictions around the world, including New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia.
In NSW and Victoria, none of the survey respondents said they were able to receive their exploration permits in two months or less. However, 22% in Western Australia, and 20% in both the NT and Queensland, indicated they had received permits within that timeframe.
Notably, all of the executives surveyed in Victoria claimed they had not been able to receive permits within six months — the longest permitting time of all jurisdictions assessed in the survey. Not only that, but 60% of respondents said it takes more than 24 months to get the necessary permits.
Though not quite as bad, 60% of executives in the NT and Queensland said it took more than six months to receive their permits, while that was the case for 56% in WA.
“When compared to Canada, most of Australia performed poorly on timely permitting for exploration,” the report said.
“Of particular concern for Australia is the sizeable percentage of respondents for Victoria indicating that it takes 24 months or more to receive their permits. Similarly, 60% of respondents for the Northern Territory indicated that it took more than 15 months to receive their permits.”
Overall, the United States has — on average — the highest percentage of executives claiming they had received their permits in six months or less, at 80%. That average fell to 59% in Canada, 49% in northern Europe, and 40% in Australia.
In terms of permitting improvements, 40% of survey respondents in the NT, and 20% in Queensland and NSW, said the timeline to obtain permits had shortened somewhat over the last 10 years. In WA, 56% said permit times had remained the same.
Conversely, another 40% of those in NSW and Queensland said permit approval timeframes had lengthened “either somewhat or considerably”. This was the same for 80% of respondents in Victoria, and just 20% in the NT.
A key metric in the survey was whether or not permit-granting bodies stick to their advertised timelines. Here, Queensland was the best-performing state in Australia, with 80% of executives saying permit timelines had been met at least 60% of the time, while 60% in NSW said the same.
Again, Victoria performed poorly, with all respondents saying regulatory bodies had met their timeframes only half of the time, if not rarely.
Globally, Australia was the worst of all jurisdictions surveyed, with just 45% of those surveyed across the country saying the stated timeframes had been met. This compares to 51% of respondents in northern Europe, 59% in Canada, and 73% in the US.
The sentiment
It makes sense, then, that there’s been so much discussion about permit timeframes in Australia.
Last month, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart weighed in, railing against “government tape” and warning it could hamstring investment and compromise living standards.
“This is serious,” she said.
“If we keep bringing in policies and adding government tape that keep attacking the mining golden geese, making projects more expensive and uncertain, there are other countries that have iron ore and other minerals, and investment will continue to move offshore.”
Likewise, WA’s Chamber of Minerals and Energy CEO Rebecca Tomkinson said in August that although the mining sector relies on regulatory frameworks that maintain environmental protections, they nevertheless need to be delivered efficiently.
“Any perceptions of inefficiency, delay or WA being hard to do business with automatically impacts our reputation with investors and our trading partners. Our legislation has to be forward-looking and not lag behind other jurisdictions — or worse, drag us backwards,” Tomkinson explained.
“Our commodities are superior quality but Australia is a relatively high-cost jurisdiction so we have to be easy to do business with, and we have to maintain our ESG standards. Those two factors set us apart from other countries vying for the same market share.”
But not everyone is convinced. Allan Trench, a mineral economist and professor at the University of WA’s Business School, says it’s hard to see where the bottlenecks are in detail without an annual audit of progress on a state-by-state, project-by-project basis.
“Approval timelines are an easy target — but I suspect not always the bottleneck, per se. It’s common for companies to say they are waiting on the state, and the state to say it’s waiting on the company,” Trench tells Mining.com.au.
“Do companies sometimes ‘hide’ behind approvals when in practice they are iterating the technical aspects of the projects, or held up with financing discussions, or simply ‘driving to market conditions’, which is code for waiting for a better market and prices — yes, companies do hide behind permitting as a scapegoat.”
In Trench’s estimation, it comes down to a lack of detailed research, which he says should be commissioned by companies, the state itself, or jointly funded by both, in order to ensure that factual data regarding such bottlenecks can be included in the improvement process.
“Right now, from the outside, as much as the process is codified, the specifics of when projects move through the process are not collated, if reported at all in detail by companies — who hide as above — and state, who, to my knowledge do not provide granular updates,” he adds.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum are environmental and conservation groups, who argue the proposed permitting reforms are being misrepresented.
Last month, Jess Beckerling, executive director of the Conservation Council of WA, spoke at a press conference in Canberra where she claimed the WA Government and some sections of the media were presenting a false picture to the rest of the country.
“As we all know, the WA Premier is currently using his influence to lobby for weaker protections for nature to further advantage polluting industries like oil and gas,” she said.
“But with all due respect, the Premier has misread the WA community on this one and he is not acting in our name.”
Beckerling also cited WA Labor MP Chris Tallentire, who in September said the recommendations outlined in a review designed to streamline environmental approvals were akin to a “wish list” industry groups had sought for years.
“It is just so important that we, as members of this place, realise that there is a concerted effort by interest groups to counter the environmental protection laws that exist at a state and federal level,” Tallentire said.
“This concerted effort is most clearly seen in the writings of the Seven West Media group, with the number of headlines and stories on at least a weekly basis attacking nature positive evidence of this.”
Once again, Professor Trench takes a more measured view.
“I think accelerated processes still have to abide by the laws. So, by definition, there will be no adverse effect,” he says.
“In practice, will there be shortcuts? If that happens even once then it would kill the accelerated process, and I think both the states and companies know that.”
Write to Oliver Gray at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock, WA DEMIRS, Fraser Institute, CMEWA, WA Labor
