Traditional owners seek safeguards as uranium miner ERA lodges lease renewal bid

A Territory uranium miner will have a fight on its hands to have a controversial lease renewed. Read what’s standing in the way.

Traditional owners are looking to enshrine permanent protections for the Jabiluka uranium deposit to prevent future mining at the site.

Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation said it will seek formal protection of the controversial site through the NT’s Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act and the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.

The corporation was responding to uranium miner ERA’s bid to renew the Jabiluka mineral lease, despite a moratorium against mining at the site without approval of the Mirrar people.

Gundjeihmi chief executive Thalia van den Boogaard said ERA should be prioritising rehabilitating the now shuttered Ranger uranium mine.

Traditional owner Yvonne Margarula of the Mirarr people stands in front of Ranger uranium mine's pit number three in Kakadu National Park.

She said the NT and federal governments should support formal protection at Jabiluka as well as ERA.

“If ERA is true to its word about wanting to protect Mirarr’s cultural heritage, we expect it will support protection through the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act,” she said.

“We’ve heard very encouraging words from this company when they assured us Ranger would be cleaned up by January 2026 and look ow wrong that turned out to be. We don’t doubt there sincerity, but we gravely doubt their capacity.”

Mirarr Traditional Owner Corben Mudjandi said ERA has a “problem”.

“ERA has a very big problem at Ranger, and this application isn’t helping with that,” he said.

“What guarantee is there that this company will be operating in 12-months time? This is big talk from a company that is $2bn short of rehabilitation at Ranger.

“ERA says it wants to protect our cultural heritage at Jabiluka, the best way of doing that is to include it in the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park where it belongs.”

ERA said its long-term care and maintenance agreement at Jabiluka, which includes a veto right over development, would provide “the best mechanism to control the future of the site”.

“Unlike the agreement between ERA and the Mirarr to protect Jabiluka, legislation can be overturned by government,” a spokesman said. “ERA has voluntarily protected Jabiluka’s cultural heritage for 20 years without the need for legislation.”

Paperwork lodged for uranium mine lease renewal

Lapsed uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia has lodged an application with the NT Government for the renewal of the Jabiluka mineral lease.

The controversial deposit was at the centre of protests two decades ago when Peter Garrett, the activist frontman of rock band Midnight Oil, led a wave of southern protesters to the proposed project’s site about 300km east of Darwin.

The company issued a statement through the ASX late Wednesday afternoon.

Acknowledging issues around the proposed mine, ERA shutdown the controversy in the early 2000s by striking a long-term care and maintenance agreement with the Mirrar people, traditional owners of the Jabiluka deposit.

Protesters at the Jabiluka site in the late 1990s. Picture: Megan Kinninment

The agreement included a veto over development unless approved by the Mirrar. ERA chief executive Brad Welsh said renewing the lease would extend the moratorium arrangement with the Mirrar.

Representing traditional owners, the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation has previously expressed its intention to oppose both the lease renewal and development of the Jabiluka mineral lease.

The Gundjeihmi Corporation has been contacted for comment.

An employee at ERA’s Ranger uranium mine in 2016.

Mr Welsh said renewing ERA’s lease is the best way to protect Jabiluka’s “cultural heritage”.

“ERA has protected the cultural heritage at Jabiluka for almost two decades under a long-term agreement with the Mirrar traditional owners that also includes a veto right over any future development,” he said.

“The agreement and veto right only remain in place if the lease is renewed.”

Former Coalition Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt, a non-executive director with ERA, supported the lease renewal application.

“The application for the lease renewal protects the rights of the Mirarr to control the future of the site,” he said.

“I have worked with Indigenous groups from all over the world and understand the importance of the veto right. The best way to preserve the veto right is to renew the MLN1 Jabiluka lease.”

ERA has been one of Australia’s largest uranium producers and operated Ranger, the country’s longest continually producing uranium mine.

Since Ranger’s closure in 2021, ERA is now spending up to $2.3bn rehabilitating the site.