Strengthen mine rehabilitation regulation and environmental compliance, monitoring and enforcement.
- Review and implement outstanding recommendations made in the 2004,2011 and 2014 Auditor General's reports on ensuring compliance with mine conditions.
- Fully implement the Auditor General’s (2022) recommendations to improve environmental monitoring, enforcement and transparency across the mining and oil and gas industries. Close the loopholes that allow companies to avoid closure or rehabilitation liabilities, ensuring that industry – not the public – bears the cost of environmental damage.
- Negotiate changes to State Agreement Acts, through Department of Energy and Economic Diversification (DEED), to require proponents to contribute to the Mining Rehabilitation Fund and develop a Memorandum of Understanding to enable DMPE to carry out monitoring and enforcement.
- Implement stronger requirements restricting the use of care and maintenance to evade closure.
- Re-establish individual bonds, in addition to levies, to strengthen the protections for meeting rehabilitation requirements and to guard against bankruptcy and incentivises rehabilitation.
- Implement individual bonds and levies, for the decommissioning of onshore and offshore oil and gas sector, to incentivise decommissioning and ensure funds are available in case of abandonment
- Introduce chain of responsibility laws for both mines and oil and gas, protecting against selling off assets that require rehabilitation or decommissioning to companies without the means to meet those requirements.
- Incentivise the potential of re-mining tailings and abandoned mines with strong rehabilitation requirements.