Ms BADGER – Thank you, minister. A couple of months or so ago, we saw on the Mineral Resources Tasmania website an advertisement for an exploration release area (ERA) for coal. Why is your government inviting new coal exploration in Tasmania when we most need to be phasing it out?
Mr ELLIS – One of the key priorities that we have, of course, is building more homes, and the coal that we mine here in Tasmania largely goes to supporting the Railton cement facility in your electorate of Lyons, just up the road from me. Cement is obviously a key component in building more homes and delivering a whole range of, for example, renewable energy projects. So by ensuring that we’re supporting Australia’s manufacturing supply chain, and particularly one of the national-scale assets that we have here in Tasmania for cement production, it’s important that they have feedstock raw materials for things like coal.
I think it’s important to note that only one company currently produces coal in Tasmania. There are no coal seam gas operations or exploration licences for coal seam gas in general. The Cornwall Coal Company, a subsidiary of Cement Australia, operates five mining leases in Tasmania. They’re all in your electorate ‑ four in Fingal valley, one just north of Hamilton in the Derwent Valley. The company’s been operating continuously since 1886.
In September 2024, Cornwall was granted a new mining lease ‑ the Blackwood 6 mining lease, or 2-1-4-5-PM mining lease, located south of Cornwall’s existing mining lease. It permits the company to establish a new access portal for extending underground resource extraction. All coal mined by Cornwall is used domestically in the manufacture of cement, at Cement Australia Railton facility. Additionally, Cornwall holds four retention licences in and around Douglas-Apsley National Park, as it has done since the 1980s.
I’ll pass to Mr Morton to add anything further.
Mr MORTON – Thank you, minister, through you. The question was about exploration release areas?
Ms BADGER – Why are we opening up more exploration areas and facilitating that to continue, which the minister didn’t touch on. I don’t want to get too far off track here.
Mr MORTON – Mineral Resources Tasmania regularly advertises exploration of these areas on its websites. The ERA processes are a legislative requirement, and effectively provide for the transparent and orderly and open release of ground that has become available, for example, where a previous licence ceases to be in force. It is not actually making any ground available that would otherwise not be available. It’s a mechanism whereby if the licence ceases to be in force, we run an orderly process.
We put an ERA out so we can get a competitive and transparent process for companies to apply. I think in the ERA, the coal one you were specifically referring to, that was recently released in early November and nobody applied; there were no applications. So it just becomes open ground, like most of the rest of Tasmania, in terms of applications for exploration licences.
Ms BADGER – Thank you very much. It’s good to know that’s through the legislative requirement, because that’s all the more reason why we need a full, open, transparent and public review of the legislation.
Minister, I’m interested in the three exploration licences that are where your government’s proposing the new $40 million-plus Tyndalls Track. Can you please give me the amount of money that these three leases have been paid out through the Exploration Drilling Grant Initiative (EDGI) grants since the track proposal came online in 2021. For reference, those are EL28/2001, EL16/2018 and EL12/2016.
Mr ELLIS – Thanks, Ms Badger, I’ll pass that to Mr Morton.
Mr MORTON – I might have to come back to that, through you, minister.
Ms BADGER – You can take that on notice.
