General comments/chat, page-13424

Phoaaarh good question Wombat my man haha - considering it only took a brief scan of the Mining Regulations and revised Mining Act (combined in excess of 220 pages), as well as other sources including the draft ministerial determinations and the like.

In short, my opinion - no they do not mandate any specific timelines.

Somewhat unsurprisingly all of the mandatory express timelines seemingly concern the applicant and the obligations on the Minister are open-ended and unspecified.

For example, while the Minister is obliged to give the applicant a notice of the outcome of their mining lease application, that obligation is as non-specific as can be:


To the extent the legislation and Regs do impose an express obligation on the Minister in so far as timeline as concerned, this would appear to concern issues where the rights and obligations of third parties are concerned, for example the land-holders:



This is all based on a brief review and I do not have expertise in this area of the law.

However, if I can hazard some educated guesses here:

(a) There are perhaps likely to be some well known no -binding conventions at play here (i.e unwritten guidelines) around general timelines about which those in the industry are aware.

(b) In any event, ADN will have a pretty good idea about the prospective timelines based on their close (“almost weekly contact”) working relationship with the Department that will have been fostered in the period of what is likely to have been over 12 months in the lead up to submission here.

All in my opinion of course. Very best.