ERA is fighting Jabiluka uranium lease decision in court, but will a decision even get made?

Resources MInister Madeleine King with Anthony Albanese; the Ranger mine, top; and Jabiluka, bottom right.

Next week a battalion of lawyers and assorted legal flunkies will do battle in the Federal Court over the future of the Jabiluka uranium mine. And the entire thing will be a complete waste of time and money.

Not because Australian voters poked a pin into Peter Dutton’s nuclear thought bubble, though that will play a part.

But because the case is very likely to be withdrawn by Rio Tinto after the high-priced lawyers finish their arguments, and probably before Justice Geoffrey Kennett delivers his decision on the matter.

The case has been brought by Energy Resources of Australia, the owner of Jabiluka and the Ranger uranium mine. ERA is now around 98 per cent owned by Rio Tinto.

The mining permits covering Jabiluka were stripped away from ERA in July 2024, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was looking for something to announce to the party faithful at the NSW Labor conference.

The mining permits were withdrawn, ERA argues, after Resources Minister Madeleine King considered her departmental brief on the subject for only 79 minutes before making the call.

All-in-all, ERA probably has a reasonable case to argue its application to extend the leases didn’t get a fair hearing from the government.

The court hearings begin on May 12, and run for four days.

But that probably doesn’t matter.

Anthony Albanese and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek want to put the rich uranium deposit into the Kakadu National Park. And, to be fair, nobody really cares except diehard minority ERA shareholder Richard Magides.

The clean-up has begun on the Ranger uranium mine in the heart of Kakadu National Park. Picture: Che Chorley

Rio doesn’t want a bar of it either, having long promised to complete the rehabilitation of Ranger and hand the entire thing back to the government and traditional owners, the Mirar people.

And therein lies the rub.

ERA’s independent directors had to challenge the decision to strip away the Jabiluka leases, lest they expose themselves to a lawsuit from minority shareholders for failing to act in their interests.

But Rio has clearly said it doesn’t want to prosecute the case, telling shareholders it will not “seek compensation for, appeal or seek judicial review of the decision”.

And Rio is set to mop up minority shareholdings in ERA on May 19, when its offer to buy them out at 0.02c a share expires. There is, of course, a small chance that process will be interrupted by a legal challenge to Rio’s offer – but the prospects of success are likely to be slim.

So, unless Rio intervenes this week – either by seeking to join the case and asking for a stay of proceedings, or by sacking the ERA board and withdrawing it ahead of time – both seen as unlikely prospects – then ERA, the Commonwealth, and the Northern Territory government will send a bunch of high-priced lawyers into court to make their case for no good reason at all, because Rio will want to drop the case when it becomes ERA’s sole owner.

In any case, the various parties have already burned through plenty of billable hours on preparing their arguments.

Which leaves only one burning question in Margin Call’s mind.

Will Rio also offer to cover everybody’s costs?