Mine rehab fund successful: Marmion

The state government’s Mining Rehabilitation Fund initiative has met with almost unanimous industry uptake, Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Marmion said today.

The fund, launched just a month ago, is a pool of contributions from mining companies that hold relevant tenements, and replaces the previous Unconditional Performance Bond approach.

The compulsory fund covers more than 22,000 tenements, but initially met with resistance as almost 1,200 tenement holders were fined for non-compliance at the start of July.

But more than 900 of those tenement holders have had fines waived as they responded to the change.

Mr Marmion said the previous system tied up $1.2 billion of company funds.

“The MRF has already freed up almost $300 million and will release much more, which is good news for the mining industry,” he said.

Mr Marmion added that the fund had achieved two major coups.

“The fund, replacing the old system of holding bond securities from tenement holders, is an Australian first,’’ he said.

“Also, the technology we developed to administer the MRF is the world’s first fully online system for monitoring minesite rehabilitation.”

Interest generated from the fund will be used to manage it and to rehabilitate legacy abandoned mine sites, whilst overseas jurisdictions and other Australian states have expressed an interest in adopting the model.