Duynhoven Harry: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Duynhoven Harry: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7879] 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Associate Minister of Energy) 
: 
 I was right to wait until this part came up before addressing the issue of clause 9 for the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith because I am afraid that he seems to have some confusion. Clause 9 is about unitisation—that is between old system licences and new system permits. Existing privileges are on licences and other interests under the Mining Act the Coal Mines Act and the Petroleum Act. Those Acts were in effect taken over by the Crown Minerals Act passed by his Government in 1991 in which I assume he took a part. One of the reasons we are here doing this is that clearly there were problems. So there are some issues but no one is losing any rights here. 
I refer Dr Smith to new section 111(3) in clause 22. That provision is about ensuring that at a given date those who had put in their application had those rights protected. The whole purpose of this provision is to ensure that we do not have some open-ended claims system running. What we have here are the rights of those people who had actually put in their applications being protected under this legislation. This is nothing to do with Glenharrow. [ 
Interruption 
] I did not interrupt Dr Smith’s speech and I ask that he do me the decency of not interrupting mine. If he wants to talk about the role of Justice Heron in this in the first Glenharrow case Justice Heron ruled that there should be an extension. He said that the transitional provisions of the Crown Minerals Act stated that the licence should continue. However in the second Glenharrow case the ruling was that the Minister of Energy is not able to grant a new mining licence under section 77 of the Mining Act. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: A new one. What about a renewal? 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN 
: Hang on and I will get there. The member should be patient. Then if we look at Justice Chisholm’s work he confirmed that the term of a licence is a condition of the licence that can be varied under section 103D of the Mining Act. Subsequently in the Court of Appeal before a full bench it was ruled that the Minister neither has the power to grant a new licence nor to consider an application to vary the term of the licence. Dr Smith has a very convenient selective memory. 
This bill cleans up and is designed to sort out a mess made by the previous Act which did not define clearly enough. I have to say that the mining industry in general has not kicked up a ruckus about this; only a few members of the industry have done so and of course its association has said that it will have to back their case. The thing that has been impressive to me is that the officials have worked this matter through with the mining industry. There has been consultation over this. It has not been a case of no consultation; there has been significant consultation since the year 2000. 
Finally I will just tidy up the issue of coal-bed methane which I think Sandra Goudie mentioned. I will leave Mr Connell’s puerile submission on this bill out of it. However to address Sandra Goudie’s intervention seriously I want to say that coal-bed methane was an issue that was considered but unfortunately it has been ruled by the Chair that the amendments required for that were outside the scope of this bill and will certainly have to be considered at a future stage as we get further down the track of coal-bed methane development.