RDPO

Rosewood District Protection Organisation Inc

On the 14th February 2014 the High Court of Australia dismissed the application for special leave to appeal by the residents of the area around ML (Mining Licence) 4712 (Ebenezer Mine). They were appealing against the decisions handed down by the Queensland Supreme Court of Appeal saying that the decision by the then Mining Minister Stirling Hinchcliffe to backdate the licence to mine ML 4712 was appropriate in law.. The licence had been expired for 3 years when this decision was made. This decision was taken in the dying days of the Labor Government in Queensland. The appellants objected to the backdating of the licence.

Should this ML (a previously mined site with low potential for future output) go ahead following this decision it has been made clear by the owners that the real objective is to extend its mining footprint into the adjoining MDL (Mining Development Lease) 172 (Bremer View Project), which covers a much larger area and to date has been untouched by mining. Whilst the court actions were in progress, some residents in the adjoining MDL 172 who are members of RDPO (Rosewood District Protection Organisation) took on the task of gathering support for a Lock the Road campaign. This initiative resulted in a Declaration Ceremony in Rosewood on November 2013 where Cr David Pahlke received declarations from residents of 10 roads in MDL 172 locking the roads and their land to open cut mining and declaring their roads Mining Free.

Watch this space for information on how residents and landholders are fighting back!