Queensland Changes Critical Mineral Approval Process to Fast-Track Projects

The Queensland government says it has overhauled internal planning laws to speed up approval of critical mineral projects.

Paul Holden, executive director of Critical Minerals Queensland, said recent changes meant a mine, a processing plant, and a port will be assessed as one project.

Holden said this meant the process would be “less clunky,” and cut the need for stakeholders to be consulted on different parts of the project.

The Queensland Parliament voted to amend the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act which lets the Coordinator-General declare “state significant projects” and set binding approval conditions.

Holden’s testimony comes as the federal House Standing Committee on Primary Industries examines the social licence behind critical minerals projects across Australia.

The inquiry comes amid the global race for critical minerals, which are important components needed for high technologies like smartphones, magnets, and EVs.

The Parliamentary inquiry has already heard the country should not develop all 31 of its critical mineral sources due to a lack of profitability or scale.

Meanwhile, Holden described baseline studies behind Queensland’s Critical Mineral Zones programme, which shares social and environmental data across seven vanadium projects so that several companies don’t have to carry out their own surveys.

Holden said this could cut assessment timeframes by up to two years.

At the same time, he said the Strong and Sustainable Resource Communities Act helped protect local employment—the Act bars mining projects within 125 kilometres of a town from using an all fly-in, fly-out workforce.

Academics Says Social Licence is Ongoing Process

Three researchers from the QUT Centre for Decent Work and Industry, giving evidence to the same committee in a separate session saying faster approvals do not by themselves win public support.

Social licence is different from a legal approval. In its submission (pdf) to the inquiry, QUT describes it as “a dynamic and intangible construct” — the ongoing acceptance of a project by the people who live with its impacts, rather than a permit granted once and finished.

Associate Professor Bree Hurst said such a licence was not permanent.

“It needs to be constantly negotiated, and that’s what makes it really challenging,” she told the committee. She pointed out that it can effectively stall a project even where regulatory approval has been granted.

“It can make it harder for a project to get finance. It can make it harder to attract employees,” Hurst said.

Professor Kim Johnston said social licence depends on how people judge the process, not just the outcome.

“It reflects stakeholder judgements about legitimacy, about trust, about credibility, and the fairness, or the perceptions of fairness, of the process,” she said.

Professor Robyn Mayes said communities often assume, once a project reaches the assessment stage, its approval is already decided.

They feel consultation is just “messing around at the edges,” she told the committee. “That undermines people’s sense that they’re engaging in a significant enterprise.”

Mayes also cautioned against treating speed itself as the goal.

“There is a risk that we have this sense of urgency around critical minerals that can be used as a way to then avoid engaging properly,” she said.