Federal Court overturns the McPhillamys block — but the minister still decides the mine

A billion-dollar gold project in New South Wales has won a round in court, but not the fight. Australia’s Federal Court ruled on Wednesday 14 October that a heritage declaration blocking part of Regis Resources’ $1.3 billion McPhillamys Gold Project near Blayney was invalid, Mining.com.au reports. The ruling sends the matter back to the current Environment Minister, Murray Watt — it does not, on its own, let the mine go ahead.

What the court decided

Justice James Stellios, whose written reasons are due on Friday, found that the declaration made by former Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek under Section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act was invalid on procedural grounds. Crucially, the court did not rule on the merits of the heritage claims themselves.

The procedural point turned on how the case developed. Information about the Blue-Banded Bee Dreaming story, provided during the process, should have been treated as a new application requiring its own process, the court found, according to the report. Because it was not, the declaration fell.

Why the tailings dam matters

The declaration covered part of the Belubula River area where Regis, through its subsidiary LFB Resources, planned to build a tailings dam — the storage facility for the waste left after gold is extracted from ore. A large open-pit mine cannot operate without one. Regis has said in its annual report that work on an alternative tailings facility is “well advanced,” and it remains committed to McPhillamys as a long-life, low-cost operation.

What happens next

The decision now goes back to Minister Murray Watt for redetermination. He could make a fresh declaration, decline to, or reach a different outcome entirely. Warren Pearce, chief executive of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), has called on Watt to act swiftly, the report says.

What it means for gold projects

The $1.3 billion figure is Mining.com.au’s; other outlets put the project’s cost at $1 billion to $1.1 billion. Either way, McPhillamys had already secured state approvals before the federal heritage declaration stopped part of it. That is the lesson for the wider industry: in Australia, as elsewhere, approval risk does not end when the first permits arrive, and it can strand capital for years. For investors, timelines on development projects are as important as their grades and costs — a point that applies equally to projects like SSR’s Converse in Nevada and Founders’ Antino in Suriname. Nothing here is a view on the heritage questions themselves, which the court did not decide.

Every figure here is as reported by the publications listed under Sources, at the time they reported it. Prices move; the live gold price has the current one. Nothing on this page is investment advice.