There are no plans to lift the uranium mining ban by the New South Wales Government in the state. Energy and Resources Minister Chris Hartcher and the Australian Uranium Association had a meeting in June but were unable to budge the ban.
The Australian Uranium Association chief executive Michael Angwin said that he used the meeting to lobby for the removal of the ban but to no effect. He said that the proposition they put to the minister was the ban on uranium mining had been in place for 25 years and that much has changed in that time. Mr Angwin said that if there were mining in NSW you could expect export revenue, you could expect jobs to be created, and the NSW Government would collect royalties.
Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham was worried about how accommodating the state government was being towards the mining industry. He said that they had seen that with coal, coal seam gas and now uranium mining, so it is of grave concern that they are turning NSW into one big quarry. His claims were trashed when the government response came in.
Energy and Resources Minister Chris Hartcher said that contrary to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald, the NSW Government has no plans to overturn the state's ban on uranium mining and exploration. He added that uranium mining and exploration is prohibited in NSW under the Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Act 1986.
There was considerable optimism in the uranium mining lobby as Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson had in May asked the Victorian and NSW governments to rethink their long-term bans on uranium mining and exploration.