Corrs High Vis: Episode 63 - Digging deeper into Queensland’s Mineral Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026

Daniel Byrne, Partner, Corrs Chambers Westgarth

Franka Cheung, Partner, Corrs Chambers Westgarth

Anna White, Partner, Corrs Chambers Westgarth

Daniel Byrne: Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Dan Byrne, a partner in the commercial litigation team at Corrs Chambers Westgarth. Today we're talking about a bill that could significantly change how mining projects are approved in Queensland. It's the Mineral Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill of 2026. I'm joined by two of my colleagues, Anna White and Franka Cheung. Anna is an environment and planning partner at Corrs. Her practice covers environmental approvals, compliance, impact assessment and climate reporting. She also advises on native title, Aboriginal cultural heritage and human rights issues. Franka is a partner in our energy resources and projects group. She's a specialist in both traditional and renewable energy projects. In the mining space, she advises clients on M&A matters, applications for mining tenements, financial provisioning and regulatory matters.

Anna White: Thanks Dan, it's great to be here.

Franka Cheung: Thanks Dan. This Bill is significant for mining projects and so glad we could talk through it.

Daniel Byrne: Okay, here's the plan for today. We'll start with a brief overview of the Bill, then look at how the existing approvals process works.  We'll get into the detail of what the Bill proposes to change, and finish by exploring its implications. Franka, let's start at the top. The government is billing this as a faster, more certain approvals process for mining projects. Is that a fair characterisation?

Franka Cheung: Yes, that's the essence of it. The key objective of the Bill is a more efficient framework for assessing mining lease applications or MLAs and the environmental authorities, known as EAs, that go with them, while still giving the community appropriate opportunities to participate. The Bill really does that in five main ways. It removes the duplication in environmental assessment between the Mineral Resources Act and the Environmental Protection Act. Objections will no longer automatically go to the Land Court. Public notification is removed for the lower risk environmental authority applications. It also narrows who can object and on what grounds and the notification processes for the mining lease and EAs are coordinated.

Daniel Byrne: And Franka where is it up to?

Franka Cheung: It was introduced on the 15th of September and was referred to the Primary Industries and Resources Committee. Public submissions close on the 12th of October and there's a public hearing on the 28th of October. The committee report is due by the 6th of November.

Daniel Byrne: Okay so before we get to the changes, let's look at how the process works today. As I understand it, a new mine in Queensland effectively needs two separate approvals running side by side. Take us through that. 

Franka Cheung: That's right. The first is the mining lease, under the Mineral Resources Act, which gives the proponent the right to mine. That's granted by the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines. The second is the EA under the Environmental Protection Act for a mining activity, which relates to the mining lease and that sets the environmental conditions. The EA is granted by the administrating body. In practice, that's the chief executive of DETSI. So two application processes that run in parallel, administered by two different regulators.

Daniel Byrne: So what happens on the mining lease side?

Franka Cheung: Well, once the application is notified, any entity can lodge a written objection by the last objection date, setting out its grounds and the facts it's relied on for the objection. This is known as a properly made objection. Every objector must also serve a copy of that objection on the applicant.

Daniel Byrne: And can you elaborate on what you mean when you say a properly made objection?

Franka Cheung: Look, the Act simply defines it simply as an objection that's been lodged under section 260 of the MRA and not withdrawn. To qualify, it has to be in writing in the approved form, lodged by the deadline and set out the grounds and supporting facts and circumstances. That matters because the Land Court can't consider any ground that isn't in a properly made objection. If there's a properly made objection, referral to the Land Court is mandatory. Where the EA application is associated with an ML application and either an objection notice has been given on the EA side or the applicant has asked for its own EA application to be referred, the EA material is rolled into the same referral so the Land Court can hear everything together. Anna will come to that shortly. Either way, the court then makes a recommendation to the minister to grant or refuse the ML either in whole or in part. The court can also recommend conditions. Notably, the court's role is administrative in that it forms part of the decision making process rather than reviewing the process. And its recommendations are not final decisions. It is not undertaking a judicial function.

Daniel Byrne: Right, so what does the court look at?

Franka Cheung: The MRA sets out a list of criteria for the court to look at. It includes whether there'll be any adverse environmental impact, whether the public right and interest will be prejudiced and whether there's any good reason to refuse the mining lease application. The Minister can then make the final decision on the ML application and must consider both the court's recommendations and those same criteria. Importantly, the Minister can't grant an ML unless a relevant EA has been issued.

Daniel Byrne: Okay, we might turn to Anna on that point. Anna, can you expand more on the EA side?

Anna White: Yes, Dan, it's a similar process. A proponent applies to the chief executive of DETSI for an environmental authority and once the application is notified, an entity can make a submission on the application. The chief executive then makes a preliminary decision to approve the application, possibly subject to conditions or to refuse it, having regard to the application, the submissions that were received and other statutory criteria. If the chief executive decides to approve the application, they give the applicants and submitters a draft of the EA. A submitter then has 20 business days to ask for its submission to be treated as an objection and the applicant can itself ask for the application to be referred to the Land Court. As Franka noted, if there's also a properly made objection to the mining lease, you then have the mining lease application, the mining lease objections and those EA objections which are then referred to the Land Court together and heard at the same time. So from the EP Act side, the submission that had been filed with DETSI ends up converting to an objection into the Land Court process if that's how the objectors wish to proceed. The court then recommends to the chief executive of DETSI that the EA either be approved on the draft or approved on different conditions, or it can be refused. The chief executive ultimately makes the final call and they have to have regard to the court's recommendation and advice from the Minister for Resources.

Daniel Byrne: Thank you both. Let's turn to how the third parties participate in the process. Anna, is it fair to say that objectors have a lot of room to move under the current system?

Anna White: Yeah, that's right. The current system is really very open. Anyone can object to an EA application. Objections can be on almost any ground, and an objection automatically leads to a Land Court hearing. That means that individuals and community groups, including from locations sometimes quite removed from a project site, can test the evidence in open court.

Daniel Byrne: And can you give us an example of that, Anna?

Anna White: Yeah, sure. A good example is the Waratah Coal case in the Galilee Basin, and it highlights the process. In that case, Youth Verdict and the Bimblebox Alliance objected to the project. In 2022, the Land Court recommended refusing both the mining lease application and the Environmental Authority application. It relied on impacts to the Bimblebox Nature Refuge and on climate change, and it found that the project would lead to around 1.58 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniel Byrne: Okay. And there have been others, presumably.

Anna White: Yeah, there are a range of other examples. The new Acland project is probably a good illustration of how broad the challenges can be. That involved the stage three expansion of an open cut coal mine near Oakey - in the Darling Downs. And objectors included a group of local farmers and community members. Their grounds of objection were broad ranging. They included air quality and dust, noise, groundwater, surface water concerns, climate change, biodiversity, physical and mental health, land values, transport heritage, and the overall economics of the project. The hearing of that matter ran for almost 100 days, which was the longest in the Land Court's history.

Daniel Byrne: And how did that hearing ultimately play out?

Anna White: Well, for that project, it ultimately went through a number of courts. We started in the Land Court, but there were then multiple appeals. It ended up going through the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, and ultimately ended up in the High Court with multiple rounds of remission back to the Land Court for further consideration.

Daniel Byrne: So it sounds like that ran for many years.

Anna White: Yeah, it did. As the High Court noted when it reached that High Court, the expansion was first sought around 14 years before its decision. So it's a good example of the delay the Government is targeting by trying to improve the efficiency and timeliness for the assessment and objection processes, including by removing those automatic referrals to the Land Court.

Daniel Byrne: That's a good segue to turn to look at the Bill in more detail. Franka, who will be able to object under the new scheme?

Franka Cheung: So under this new scheme, only eligible entities can object to a mining lease application. That essentially means you have to be an affected person or an occupier of land within the proposed lease or the owner or occupier of land within the 125 kilometre zone around the mining lease application. The same limit applies in relation to the EA side where under the Bill the objection is against the draft EA issued by the Chief Executive of DETSI. Essentially this shifts the public notification stage back to the decision stage of the EA application.

Daniel Byrne: And we discussed earlier the broad grounds of objection that currently exist. How have those grounds for objecting changed?

Franka Cheung: Look, the Bill really narrows those as well. A mining lease objection now, under the Bill, has to relate to the matters the Minister can consider when deciding the application. The environmental impact criteria is removed from the mining lease process because the environmental impacts are dealt with through the EP Act assessment and that removes a lot of what the project proponents consider unnecessary duplication. The broad “good reason” ground has also become only something which the Minister considers, as opposed to what a broad objector base can raise.

Daniel Byrne: So the headline change is that objections will no longer automatically end up in the Land Court. How is that going to work under the Bill?

Franka Cheung: Yes, that's correct. The Bill removes that automatic referral to the Land Court. Instead, the Minister or DETSI has the discretion to refer the matter. The Bill doesn't set out the criteria for when a referral should be made, but what we see in explanatory notes is that the intention is that matters will be referred where an independent consideration is warranted. The referral can cover the whole application or just specific issues, and it's only available if there's a properly made objection.

Anna White: That raises an interesting point, I think, Franka, just to jump in here. There is no guidance yet around what the criteria are that will be considered to inform a decision on whether or not referral to the Land Court is warranted, other than the comments in the explanatory notes. I think there will be calls for further criteria to be specified to provide some certainty or at least guidance for industry to understand when matters may be likely to end up in the Land Court.

Daniel Byrne: Anything else our clients should know Franka?

Franka Cheung: There are two more changes. Firstly, lower risk standard and variation to Environmental Authority applications will no longer go through notifications, submissions or objections. Secondly, there'll be a single combined public notice for the ML and EA with one objection period for both. That notice can only issue once DETSI has assessed the EA application and for a site specific application decided to approve it and issue a draft EA and the draft progressive rehabilitation and closure plan schedule. So objectors are responding to draft conditions rather than to the application that's been lodged.

Daniel Byrne: It sounds like in practical terms, the groups we often see objecting to projects from a long way away will largely be shut out of the formal objection process. Anna, is that right?

Anna White: Largely, yes, that's right. Entities that do not own or occupy land in or within the 125 kilometre range of the proposed mining lease area won't be able to lodge formal objections. And as Franka had just mentioned, even then an eligible objector won't automatically get a Land Court hearing. Their objection will be considered by the minister for the purposes of the ML and the chief executive of DETSI for EAs and it will only be considered by the Land Court if one of those decision makers refers it to the court.

Daniel Byrne: So they're not shut out completely?

Anna White: No, not completely. The Bill provides that any person can lodge a submission about the draft EA and the chief executive of DETSI may consider a submission, but is not required to.

Daniel Byrne: And what about projects that are already in the Land Court?

Anna White: Yeah, that's a good question. That depends on how far along they are. If a Land Court hearing has already started or has progressed by court direction, it continues under the old regime. If a matter has been referred but a hearing hasn't yet started, it will go back to the decision maker under this new process.

Daniel Byrne: Okay, thank you both. Let's finish with what comes next. Anna, if objectors lose ground in the Land Court, where else might they go?

Anna White: Yeah, well, while the Bill narrows formal participation rights, third parties wishing to challenge mining projects are becoming increasingly novel in their approach and turning to a range of other mechanisms. These include applications for judicial review being lodged, often paired with a piggyback claim under the Queensland Human Rights Act. Those claims under the Human Rights Act can't be brought as standalone actions, but they can attach to other grounds of review. The Commonwealth EPBC Act, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, potential challenges under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act in terms of traditional owner interests are also avenues that are sometimes explored, sometimes quite creatively in relation to resources projects.

Daniel Byrne: And Anna, in June the Government announced a review of Queensland's human rights and anti-discrimination framework. Does that add another layer?

Anna White: Yeah, it does. That review also includes a further review of the Human Rights Act itself. Submissions for that review close on the 30th of October and a final report is due to the Attorney General early next year. The review's terms of reference expressly cover whether additional human rights should be recognised and whether different provisions should be made about the proceedings that may be brought or remedies awarded, where an act or a decision of a public entity is made unlawful under the Human Rights legislation. That goes directly to the piggyback claims that I just mentioned. So while this proposed Bill narrows the objection pathways under the Mineral Resources Act and the Environmental Protection Act, it remains to be seen whether those reforms result in a wider set of remedies under the Human Rights Act, or at least a discussion about whether or not there should be wider remedies which continue to sit across both acts and attach to the decisions that the Bill is streamlining.

Daniel Byrne: Okay so just a few final comments before we wrap up. Stepping back, Anna, this Bill doesn't sit in isolation. In addition to the Human Rights Act review you just mentioned, we've seen quite a bit of reform for resources projects recently at both state and Commonwealth level.

Anna White: Yeah, that's right. In Queensland, the financial provisioning scheme was reformed last year to reduce the compliance and administrative burden on industry. And at the Commonwealth level, as I've just mentioned, we have the recent reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that are relevant to projects, including through the application of new national environmental standards and changes to offset requirements. I mean, taken together, the message is that the approvals and regulatory landscape for resources projects is changing on several fronts and clients need to be thinking about their approval strategy as a whole, rather than looking at any of these reforms in isolation so that they can assess the overall strategy and make sure they're well placed to navigate what needs to be dealt with in the application process.

Daniel Byrne: And do you think the Bill will pass?

Anna White: Look, I think it's likely. It fits the pattern of reforms and the Queensland Government has the numbers in Parliament. However, the environmental and community groups will oppose this quite firmly.

Daniel Byrne: Finally, what are your key messages for clients? Franka, let's start with you.

Franka Cheung: Look, I think the headline item is that the Bill is intended to make the Queensland mining approvals quicker and more predictable, and it sits alongside other recent reforms aimed at reducing that regulatory burden on the industry. The government’s own framing for it is quite unambiguous. The Minister told Parliament on introduction that the longer a project is held up in approvals, the less economic it becomes. The accompanying media statement is blunter again. It described historic reforms to what is quite an archaic approvals process, and the intention is to stamp out environmental ‘lawfare’. The Minister also said that the reform will end objections from activists being automatically referred to the Land Court and leaving projects in limbo for years, as we've seen in some of the cases that Anna mentioned.

Anna White: It's important to remember that the debate about these projects won't go away. It will just move to other forums. If it's not heard in the Land Court, it will be heard elsewhere potentially with the novel claims. So that means proponents of resources projects need to have a clear approval strategy from the outset. Of course, they need to consider all of their environmental risks early, engage with key stakeholders, including local communities and First Nations groups, and be prepared for legal challenges because those challenges are increasingly on the horizon, potentially now just in different forums to those we've seen today.

Daniel Byrne: Thanks very much, Anna and Franka, and thank you to everyone for listening. If you'd like to discuss the Bill and its implications, please feel free to get in touch with the team at Corrs. Thank you.