A company connected to a variety of Labor figures, which bought a mine for simply $1, enjoyed multimillion-dollar refunds from its ecological bond after concessions from the Palaszczuk Federal Government, Right to Details documents (RTI) show.
Bottom line:
- Environment authorities wished to keep the $80 million bond up until TerraCom’s topsoil trials was successful
- However TerraCom has gotten to nearly half the money
- Lock the Gate says the Federal government made “a remarkable set of concessions”
The ageing Blair Athol mine, which TerraCom purchased from Rio Tinto, included an $80 million rehabilitation bond that the Department of Environment and Science (DES) at first wanted to keep in full.
The State Government requires miners to provide bonds to cover the cost of restoring the mine site, in case they go out of business.
However, TerraCom, which has actually rebooted coal mining at the website, has considering that gotten to almost half the restricted money despite officials saying site restoration could cost taxpayers “considerably” more than TerraCom’s computations.
The Federal government has actually reduced the bond by about $8 million and enabled the business to access a more $27 million cash in exchange for an insurer’s guarantee for the same quantity.
Documents gotten under RTI laws by anti-mining group Lock the Gate shed light on the concessions the Government made while promoting reforms to safeguard taxpayers from the costs of abandoned mines.
TerraCom defended more than 2 years against the public release of the files.
They included a department instruction note that stated its decision was likely to be of “considerable neighborhood and public interest”.
‘ Ruled out best practice’
DES wished to raise the bond to $935 million however TerraCom negotiated it down to $75