Sunset Clause Annual Release 2023

List of documents due for publication now available
Date: Tuesday, 07 March 2023

The annual release of mineral exploration reports will commence at the beginning of May 2023. A list of reports submitted in 2017 and between 2011 and 2012 under Section 115a of the Mining Act 1978 is now available on this website.

Tenement holders and operators are able to submit objections for two months following the listing of the eligible reports.

Regulation 96(5) states that the Minister may, upon the written application of the holder of a mining tenement, refuse to release the information for a further period or further periods not exceeding five years in each case.

The first five year period of confidentiality is mandatory. The period of confidentiality granted, following an acceptable objection from the tenement holder, is at the Minister’s discretion.

Objections made in 2017 to the release of reports submitted in 2012 have now lapsed and need to be renewed or the reports will be released. A list of those reports is available on the department’s website.

GSWA released around 1500 reports in 2022. Mining and exploration data is an invaluable resource for the State, mining and exploration companies and the geoscientific community at large and has been described as the ‘lifeblood of mineral exploration’.