The fate of billionaire Andrew Forrest’s bid to safeguard his prized family cattle station now lies in the hands of Western Australia’s appeals court after he launched yet another lawsuit to stop mining at Minderoo.
Lawyers for sand miner Quarry Park and ASX-listed Cauldron Energy gathered this week to convince the Court of Appeal not to overrule the Supreme Court, which threw out Forrest’s bid to halt a tenement swap by declaring the grant invalid.
Nicola and Andrew Forrest on their family cattle property Minderoo Station.
It’s one of several disputes the mining magnate has spearheaded via his private companies to stop exploration around the Pilbara station in the decade since he forked out more than $12 million to put it back in the family’s hands.
Minderoo station, which spans 230,000 hectares, had been owned by Forrest’s ancestors for more than 120 years when his father sold it at the turn of the century.
Forrest has spent the past decade snapping up exploration leases surrounding his childhood home to prevent miners from doing the same, due to the environmental impact of mining in the area.
Forrest’s stoush with Quarry Park began in 2013, after it landed a mining lease over a 95-hectare stretch of Minderoo.
In December 2020, Quarry Park inked a deal to sell the lease to Cauldron in exchange for shares, just three weeks before Forrest’s Wyloo Metals venture applied for an exploration licence over the same area.
When Wyloo got wind of the plan it dragged the pair, Mines Minister Bill Johnston and the warden to court, leaning on a High Court ruling which found an application could be deemed invalid if the original proponent hadn’t handed over enough information, in this case a mineralisation report.
Forrest initially gained an injunction preventing the lease transfer.
But the matter was ultimately dismissed by Justice Paul Tottle, who concluded Cauldron had gained protection via a special transferee clause buried in the act, even if the tenement grant was invalid.
Wyloo took to the appeals court to have the ruling overturned after pointing out a grant or transfer was to be regarded invalid if it was the product of a jurisdictional error.
This week, defence lawyer Steven Penglis insisted the registration of Cauldron’s interest resuscitated the grant and there was no legal basis upon which the court should stop the tenement swap.
“Our entitlement to pursue this should not be interfered with,” he said.
“As long as it remains on the register, it remains a grant.
“We would urge the court not to grant an injunction because there is no right to have us restrained.”
The Appeals Court has reserved its judgment.
The move comes just weeks after Forrest lost his bid to stop Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources from building a haul road alongside the station after raising concerns about its impact on livestock with the environmental watchdog.
The lawsuit shared parallels with the long-running legal tussle Forrest had with Perth-based Onslow Resources, which ended abruptly in 2021 when Onslow was forced to forfeit its license to mine the Ashburton riverbed after being found to have breached its conditions.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.