Danzae always good to have a discussion such as the one you have...

Danzae always good to have a discussion such as the one you have posed. Your points are definitely valid and to date I would say the permit not being approved points more to your narrative being correct as opposed to mine. However for the sake of this conversation let me come back to you with what I can in so far as the opposing point of view.

History suggests that the SP only moves when there is movement in the process application i.e historically we look at the SP movement when Barilaro actually made his call. Other than that the SP has remained pretty stagnant not withstanding the pump and dumps that occur periodically. I would find it staggering that a leak would occur within the political ranks on a stock with such a high political profile. I may expect to see some decent volume trading and SP movement only when NSW moves its decision to the Federal JA, but other than that I don't agree that everybody in Canberra knows that approval is coming or not. The leaky ship in my experience happens much closer to the actual decision day and not before, which is why we all get excited when the SP moves a bit.

I agree with you in so far as everybody of every political persuasion would like this to go away, and my take on the delay is that they have been, and maybe continue to be looking for a legal reason to deny the permit. To date neither Scomo nor Albo's governments have been able to do this and if anybody had a legal reason this permit would have been denied months ago. So the tactics of the government as you correctly point out is to delay the processing. The question is whether the delay is to the extreme i.e next election or simply buying a little more time to make sure there is no legal way to deny. Not sure if the political implications are as drastic as you say remebering that Scomo already tried that trick and it failed miserably. I don't think the ALP will be returned to government or otherwise off the back of a PEP11 approval but that's just my opinion.

My take (and I hasten to add I have been wrong up until now) is that making public the fact that Husic is the decision maker does not reconcile with a government wanting to delay until the next election. I think back to when Pitt was the decision maker until he stopped saying he was which left us all confused and searching for the answer of who is. Ultimately we found out it was Scomo but that was not made public and as such created further delay and confusion.

Add to this that the judge has stipulated that the law must be followed and if it is we know NOPTA has recommended approval (otherwise again it would have been denied by now), then natural process would see the permit approved.

Again my argument falls down because it has not been approved to date so I can only say that this is my opinion based on how I see the world right now but I absolutely respect and get where you are coming from. I think we all hope I am right but until the day comes (either approval or the next election) we continue to speculate.

Cheers and appreciate the discussion