Report: Pathways to relinquishment workshop

A three hour workshop was held on Friday 31 March 2017 at the Muswellbrook RSL club as part of the Tom Farrell Institute (Newcastle University) rehabilitation conference. The workshop was facilitated by independent consultants Donna Pershke and Peter Elliott. The workshop was attended by a participants representing a broad range of interests including State and Local Government (planning and regulatory functions), mining industry, consultants, academia and community. This report captures the outputs from the workshop (Appendix A to Appendix E) and summarises the key themes arising during discussions (Section 2). Some brief concluding remarks are provided in Section 3.

The workshop’s goal was to identify, through multiple stakeholders, the opportunities, barriers, enablers and responsibilities for establishing pathways to:
• More productive end land uses post mining
• Enabling miners to successfully relinquish their responsibility for their mine lease
• Assisting the transition to the next landholder