The exposure draft of the new Strong and Sustainable Resource Communities Bill 2016 has been circulated by the Qld Department of State Development.  This thirteen-page Bill has come about to honour an election commitment made by the State Labor government to end 100% fly-in fly-out mine workforces. 

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There are a number of issues in this Bill that should concern the resources industry including;

• The Bill is retrospective and will apply to all large resource projects which have gone through the EIS process since 30 June 2009,

• The Bill will apply to all projects future that proceed through an EIS process under the 1994or in Qld,

• The Bill enables the Co-ordinator General to stop the EIS process proceeding until it is satisfied with the social impact assessment for the project,

• The Bill enables the Coordinator General to impose conditions on the project (via the EIS process) – and neither the Land Court nor the Planning and Environment Court can be used to challenge these conditions.
   

Interestingly the Bill will only apply to the operations workforce – so the construction workforce for these projects are not impacted by this Bill. 

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One has to wonder if this Bill will really resolve the issues identified by the Qld Government commissioned FIFO Review report (October 2015) and the Parliamentary Committee report. 

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The Bill itself is just adding to the legislative hurdles for the resource industry in Qld.  Surely there has to be a better way of ensuring the resources industry supports the regional communities that they work in?

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