Millways,Here is an article from The West on Wednesday.....the...

Millways,

Here is an article from The West on Wednesday.....the use of the Pancontinental case as a precedent for the Minister to intervene is interesting - some might even say desperate given s.111(d) was specifically inserted to cover the situation of a ML

Also the use of the terms "Rio to be ROBBED of a valuable resource" and "Critically, STRIPPING the lease from Rio" I'm assuming is the journo paraphasing the State/RIO lawyer is a bit rich as the WA govt and Cazaly have done neither - it was Rio's own actions that caused the licence to expire through non renewal.

Cazaly sweats on court verdict over Shovelanna

Cazaly Resources is facing a long nervous wait to find out whether it is back in the running for the rich Shovelanna iron ore deposit in the Pilbara after yesterday wrapping up its landmark Supreme Court appeal to quash the State Government's controversial termination of its claim.

After hearing two days of submissions, the full bench of the WA Supreme Court reserved its decision on whether to reinstate Cazaly’s claim to the Shovelanna lease accidentally relinquished by Rio Tinto in August 2005, but the final ruling is not expected for at least six to I2 months.

At yesterday's hearing, the WA Government made the startling admission it had “misquoted” advice provided by the Department of Industry and Resource on which former resources minister John Bowler partially relied when deciding to kill Cazaly's claim “in the public interest” last April Cazaly claimed the advice, provided by a senior DoIR officer,represented a "critical misdirection'' to Mr 'Bowler by selectively and wrongly paraphrasing a legal opinion produced by the State Solicitors Office on an unrelated dispute over iron ore tenements as evidence of the intention of the State's unwritten iron ore policy.

Mr BowIer in large part, based his ruling on the policy, which he said entitled iron ore producers to "less onerous” conditions of tenure over resources because of the long term nature of iron ore developments and their reliance on long term contracts.

The Government's lawyer, Rob Mitchell, admitted that DoIR had "misquoted and “formulated” its own reading of the legal opinion, but said it was “not an inaccurate” summary of the iron ore policy.

Mr Mitchell also argued that Mr Bowler's use of his discretionary powers to intervene and kill Cazaly’s application was not inconsistent with the State's Mining Act as claimed by Cazaly, because it had been introduced to deal with that exact situation in 1986. It was then written into the Mining Act when Pancontinental Mining forgot to renew its mining lease over the gold mine which was pegged by a local prospector putting the future of one of the State's biggest gold mines in doubt.

Mr Mitehell also argued that the Minister was right to terminate Cazaly’s claim in the public interest because of the possible damage to future investment in WA were Rio to be robbed of a valuable resource due to an inadvertent "slip".

Critically, stripping the lease from Rio would have prevented the Government from fulfilling a pledge made in 1979 to incorporate Shovelanna into a State Agreement covering the Rhodes Ridge iron ore joint venture in the future. The Rhode Ridge partners - Rio, Hanc@ck Prospecting and Wright Prospecting - had discovered the resource and were entitled to expect it would be developed under the Rhodes Ridge agreement. terms