A mine upstream of the Great Barrier Reef is “two signatures away” from a Queensland government green light, ignoring Federal government rules. Andrew Gardiner reports.

The proposed 272-hectare gold and copper mine project, Dittmer Mine, poses potential risks to local waterways and fauna. Critics also say two of its main backers should have been banned from mining after Bowen Coking Coal walked away from environmental obligations and Bowen Basin Mine went broke last year.

Queensland Government. Risking the Great Barrier Reef for a goldmine?

by Andrew Gardiner

Jeudi Croker from Save Whitsunday Water told MWM, “Bowen walked away from environmental rehabilitation mandates, and now they want to mine Dittmer, pivoting into copper and gold, which has a well-documented history of water pollution and catchment contamination.”

Before its collapse, Bowen put up a multi-million-dollar bond for environmental rehabilitation costs at its Bluff coal mine in central Queensland. But the bond from Dittmer’s backers, Ballymore Resources, is just $18,000, a pittance next to the cost to North Queensland’s ecology and economy: $1B per year from Whitsunday visitors, if mine pollution reaches and spoils the Great Barrier Reef coastal catchment.

Why the big difference? The government seems to have based the project’s size on the lease for Dittmer’s historic mine from the 1930s or 1950s, not the 272 hectares it will cover more than half a century on, with the potential risks downstream of the site.

“This large-scale mine is being regulated under small-scale environmental authority approvals”, Croker wrote in a petition to parliament. This reduces the bond to a pittance and spares Ballymore from rigorous environmental impact requirements.

Successive Queensland governments have ignored the discrepancy and kept baseline and hydrogeological data crucial to determining the mine’s environmental safety under wraps and away from public scrutiny. This in turn stymied public debate and hid the approvals process behind a wall of bureaucratic silence.

Critics say local Whitsunday MP and Child Safety minister Amanda Camm  (currently the subject of separate, “serious questions” over conflict of interest) didn’t push for the data to be made public on behalf of her constituents, leaving them in the dark over the mine’s true impact.

“She’s been aware of the missing data for years, and it leaves me wondering: ‘why the continued silence?’”, Croker told MWM.

Queensland’s LNP raked in at least $1 million from miners and allied lobby groups in the years before its 2024 election win. The party’s long-standing support for digging holes in the ground is perhaps best summed up by the man who gets to decide whether Dittmer goes ahead in the coming weeks, Resources and Mining Minister Dale Last.

“We have the resources, industrial capability, energy and importantly, the will to deliver critical minerals to the world”, Last told state parliament. Copper, which Dittmer would mine for, is one of the “critical minerals” mentioned by Last, who was on the record as supporting Bowen Coking Coal before it collapsed.

Those involved with Bowen’s demise may be disqualified from running Dittmer under state and federal provisions around bankruptcies and ‘anti-Phoenixing’, but the decision on their future ultimately rests with Last, the relevant minister.

Questions he’s supposed to consider around banning directors include:

• Were they associated directors at the relevant time?
• Did the bankruptcy occur over the last 10 years?
• Were there regulatory breaches, mismanagement or unresolved rehabilitation liabilities?

If the answer to all three is largely ‘yes’, the likelihood of a ban should have been real. Under ministerial discretion, it remains a mystery as to whether such questions were even asked.

Queensland’s Land Court gave Dittmer a recommended approval and draft Environmental Authority last year, leaving Last’s signature (and that of the department head) as the final hurdle. If approved, Dittmer will join last month’s massive Hunter Valley Operations coal mine continuation project, and at least 12 distinct mine projects or expansions have been given the go-ahead since January 2025.

Pro-rated, that’s 33% more approvals than in the same period prior to 2025.

The stakes for the Whitsundays, an area Sir David Attenborough calls “a dramatic and beautiful manifestation of life”, couldn’t be higher. Potential Dittmer mine impacts include:

• Contamination of Kelsey Creek – which flows through the Dittmer site – by dissolved metals or sediment, in turn damaging the creek’s freshwater ecosystems;
• Risks to drinking-water supplies;
• Acid mine drainage;
• Toxic processing chemicals entering waterways;
• Groundwater disturbance;
• Downstream effects on the Great Barrier Reef catchment.

Kelsey Creek, a High Ecological Value (HEV) water system which feeds downstream wetlands and reef-linked systems, is critical to the area’s ecology. It is nominally protected from pollution by state law, yet Dittmer is just two signatures shy of approval, its impact shrouded in secrecy.

Critics point to Dittmer as a textbook case of what they call “state capture” in Queensland, where politicians, bureaucrats and public debate are boxed into a framework favouring miners and billionaires. Croker, for one, encountered three years of “mainstream media indifference” as she tried to raise questions around Dittmer, the people behind it and the approvals process.

An MWM analysis of Dittmer’s media coverage over the past 12 months revealed eight articles which were positive in tone (often uncritically accepting Ballymore’s word) and just one($) which seriously touched on community concern around its impact on local ecology and the approvals process. Jeudi Croker told MWM,

We’ve hit a brick wall trying to get our message out there.

Worse still, critics say they’ve received little in the way of support from government-funded organisations which say they’re there to support communities with worries about a mining project. “The Environmental Defenders Office and Queensland Conservation Council wouldn’t help us, so we’ve done it all ourselves”, Croker said.

“Thankfully, our campaign has support from 5,000 people with many experts in their fields, including ecologists, hydrogeologists, scientists and lawyers”.

They may need a good pro bono lawyer after a landmark High Court decision around coal emissions early this month, which has the potential to force planning authorities to more seriously consider environmental consequences outside the boundaries of non-coal projects like Dittmer. That would include potential contamination in Kelsey Creek, threatened-species habitat and other downstream effects.

For now, however, Croker says she’d settle for those responsible for Dittmer’s fate enforcing those rules already on the books, and letting the public see the data. “Surely that’s not asking too much, considering what’s at stake”.

MWM sent Minister Last a series of questions around the Dittmer approvals process. In response, a departmental spokesperson told us the Land Court’s go-ahead was just “one part of the process,” adding, “It would not be appropriate to pre-empt the outcome”.

https://michaelwest.com.au/queensland-government-risking-the-great-barrier-reef-for-a-goldmine/

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