The chief executive of the company which holds the Jabiluka mining lease says he struggled to get 10 minutes to discuss the project’s future with Resources Minister Madeleine King, despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese making time to meet anti-uranium campaigner Peter Garrett, his former Labor colleague.

Brad Welsh, the CEO of Energy Resources of Australia, outlined the frustrations in documents lodged in a Federal Court stoush over mining at Jabiluka, the Northern Territory deposit that has been a lightning rod for debate over nuclear power and Indigenous land rights for the past three decades.