Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 14 July 2021
MMG CONCEDES ON LAW & STOPS TOXIC DUMP WORKS.
Giant Beijing-based mining corporation MMG has stopped work on its toxic tailings dam project in the takayna/Tarkine rainforest after receiving advice from the Bob Brown Foundation that it was breaking the law (copy below).
“MMG has flouted the provisions of federal environment law that make it illegal to proceed with such high-handed work on a project before an environmental impact assessment has been done. Its sudden cessation of work after receiving our letter indicating we would take court action indicates that their own legal advice concurs with ours. The arrogance of this company proceeding as it has is monumental,” Bob Brown said today.
“MMG now needs to apologise and make up to the seventy good people who have been arrested getting in the way of their machines which, obviously, had no right to be in the Tarkine,” he said.
“We also wrote to the Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, with the same advice. But I told her 2 weeks ago when she visited takayna/Tarkine, that this whole operation was illegal. It is astonishing that the Federal Government left it to a citizens’ group to uphold its own Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act’s logical law that an environmental assessment on the impact on rare and threatened species is done before, not after, bulldozers move into the forest. The federal authorities must now consider charging MMG,” Brown said.
Tasmanian Times has invited MMG to comment.
