Wayne Swan miner denies lobbyist tie to Queensland Labor

A Labor-linked mining company seeking approval for a sandmining operation on Cape York has denied using lobbyists to meet the Queensland government.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: David Clark

A Labor-linked mining company seeking approval for a sandmining operation on Cape York has denied using lobbyists to meet the Queensland government, despite records revealing more than 50 lobbying contacts with senior ministerial officials on the firm’s behalf.

Publicly listed Diatreme Resources – chaired by former federal treasurer Wayne Swan – has employed Labor lobbyists Anacta Strategies since August 2020, months before the firm’s principals, Evan Moorhead and David Nelson, helped Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk win her third state election.

The Queensland Lobbyist Register, maintained by the state’s Integrity Commissioner, reveals Anacta contacted or met senior government officials 54 times in less than two years on behalf of ­Diatreme for reasons suppressed as “commercial in confidence”.

Mr Moorhead – a former ALP state secretary and head of Palas­zczuk government strategy – rang Ms Palaszczuk’s deputy chief of staff, her senior policy adviser and another policy adviser 18 times to lobby on behalf of Diatreme.

He also met and contacted top staffers for Transport Minister Mark Bailey, Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon and Resources Minister Scott Stewart dozens of times.

Ms Palaszczuk’s spokesman said Mr Moorhead telephoned her senior staffers 18 times to seek “co-ordination of the government’s response to the proposal”.

Mr Moorhead and Mr Nelson were banned from lobbying the Queensland government in July after an independent report found the practice of lobbyists also working as political campaigners would “naturally raise suspicions” of government favouritism.

“The public is naturally sceptical about whether this is a fair way to conduct business,” Peter Coaldrake wrote.

Mr Moorhead’s most intense period of lobbying of Palaszczuk government officials followed Diatreme lodging a mining infrastructure lease application on June 10 last year for its export solution, a “barge ramp” transhipment port in the Great Barrier Reef, to be built at Nob Point near the Hope Vale Aboriginal community.

Eastern Cape York, near where Diatreme wants to mine for silica. Picture: Kerry Trapnell

One of the Palaszczuk government’s earliest legislative moves after it was elected in 2015 was to pass the Sustainable Ports Development Act, which requires the government to reject any application to build a new port in the Great Barrier Reef Coast Marine Park. While Diatreme told the ASX on June 10 last year that the Thiithaarr and Gamaay native title holders “strongly backed” the Nob Point option, contemporaneous notes from a February 2021 community meeting in Hope Vale – which company representatives attended – record a large group of traditional owners warning the company that the barge ramp would be “culturally in­appropriate”. At the same time, other locals raised concerns about the impacts they feared sand mining would have on water in the community and nearby aquifers.

“Lots of people are on dialysis – need clean water,” the notes say.

The company has been accused by some Aboriginal native title holders of misleading governments and the stock exchange by saying it has the full support of traditional owners when there is significant dissent.

Records show another lobbyist, Leo Zussino of Sun-Coast Business Consultants and a long-time former chief executive of the state-owned Gladstone Ports Corporation, lobbied state-owned Ports North chief executive Chris Boland nine times between April and June last year.

Diatreme Resources chief executive Neil McIntyre said Anacta was hired to “provide advice on government engagement” and Mr Zussino was “retained for a short time to provide technical shipping and logistics advice regarding Cape Flattery Port”.

“The company undertakes its own meetings with government and agencies as required and doesn’t use lobbyists for that purpose,” he said.

The Integrity Commissioner’s lobbyist register records “contacts” as face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, text messages, emails and letters.

Diatreme withdrew the Nob Point export option in October, and is preparing to lodge an application to build a slurry pipeline to the Ports North port at Cape Flattery, where Mitsubishi has a decades-old silica mine.