By Lyn Jablonski

Just a week after hundreds of miners attended an urgent meeting in Lighting Ridge, the Minister for Finance and Natural Resources, Courtney Houssos, visited the town on Tuesday 6 June.

Ms Houssos was joined by Stephen Lawrence MLC and Roy Butler, Member for Barwon for direct conversations about sorting out the mess surrounding opal mining leases that has affected more than 800 local miners.

The MPs met with around 15 miners from the Lightning Ridge Miners Association, the Grawin Glengarry & Sheepyards Miners Association, and two miners from White Cliffs, as well as around ten local landholders and the Crown Reserves Trust to discuss how to speed up the reissuing of mining licences for the opal fields.

"This is an issue we inherited which dates back to 2015 to where licences that were issued were incorrectly issued by the Department," Minister Houssos said.

"We may have inherited this mess, but we are committed to fixing it, and that is what our conversations revolved around on Tuesday," she said.

The Minister said that the department had already begun reissuing the mining licences.

According to Minister Houssos, there have been 82 applications received and the department has reissued eight licences. There are 827 miners affected and about 3,300 mining leases.

Sebastian Deisenberger, President of the Lighting Ridge Miners Association (LRMA), met with the Minister and said he was impressed with how she supported the miners.

Mr Deisenberger explained to her that he had spoken to the buyers of opal worldwide and told them of the seriousness of the situation.

He said he believed the Minister was interested in getting miners back to work and then fixing the legislation later.

"I encourage everyone (miners) to get their package from the department and only process the claims you are working on at the moment so you don't have a bottleneck," he said.

Mr Deisenberger believes that if miners follow this process instead of trying to renew all their claims, the process will be much quicker and not take the eight weeks as predicted.

Not a 'Stop Work Order'

The Minister was asked about the 'Stop Work' order and if compensation will be made available.

 "It is not a Stop Work Order," she said. "We have been forced to reissue licences because they have been issued illegally in the first place."

"The 'Stop Work Order' is a specific leading term; I want to be really clear ... It is not a 'Stop Work Order'; it is that the licences have not been legally issued under the Mining Act, so they are no longer valid.

"We need to reissue these licences because, without a valid licence, this leaves miners open to criminal offences, including trespass."

Minister Houssos did not provide a comment on any potential compensation to miners for loss of income, however some costs of renewing a lease will be waived.

"We announced on Tuesday in Lightning Ridge we will be refunding the administrative fees and levies associated with those licences," the Minister said.

"It was a problem within the department, but our focus is to get miners back onto their leases," she said.

Picking up the pieces 

Mr Deisenberger explained that since 2015 there has been a reliance on emails as the way for miners to contact landholders to seek permission to enter their property.

He told the Western Plains App that this has been problematic for many miners who don't own a computer or mobile phones.

As reported in a previous article, the bureaucratic bungling that occurred from 2015 was initially discovered by the Coalition Government in February this year when the process to rectify the problem began.

The current Government has picked up the baton and is now working to resolve this issue.

Minister Houssos advised that Stephen Lawrence will be the Government's local envoy as they try to resolve this problem.

"Steven will be working closely with Roy Butler as we try and find a solution and get miners back onto their leases as quickly as possible," she said.

In addition to the local office at Lightning Ridge, there are plans to have twice weekly 'pop-up' sessions to assist miners in applying for those licences.