The Greens have asked the Auditor-General to investigate the approval of the Yeelirrie uranium mine in Western Australia by former federal environment minister Melissa Price, after a damning ABC report this week showed a deeply flawed approval process.
\nGreens Environment Spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wrote to the Auditor-General Grant Hehir on Thursday and requested his office consider the matter (letter attached).
\n\u201cThe Morrison Government\u2019s conduct when it comes to approval of this uranium mine stinks. Former environment minister Melissa Price, ticked and flicked the night before the 2019 federal election against the advice of her own department,” Senator Hanson-Young said.
\n\u201cThe environmental approval of this mine smacks of political interference and cronyism.
\n\u201cFOI documents show that somehow between 9.31pm and midnight, the minister managed to examine hundreds of pages of the decision package she had just received, remove key protections for threatened species and grant approval.
\n\u201cThe minister went against her own department\u2019s advice and did so after the company had asked her to expedite the process together with former resources minister Matt Canavan who also intervened to get the approval across the line.
\n\u201cIt seems we have yet another case of an environment-wrecking project riddled with improper process, going against department advice and with political interference all on PM Morrison\u2019s watch. The Auditor-General\u2019s scathing report in June last year showed potentially hundreds of cases such as this exist. It is no wonder we are in an extinction crisis.
\n\u201cThe Morrison Government cannot keep getting away with doing favours for its mining and development mate or our wildlife and wild places will all soon be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens have asked the Auditor-General to investigate the approval of the Yeelirrie uranium mine in Western Australia by former federal environment minister Melissa Price, after a damning ABC report this week showed a deeply flawed approval process. Greens Environment Spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wrote to the Auditor-General Grant Hehir on Thursday and requested his … Continue reading “Auditor-General asked to investigate dodgy Yeelirrie uranium mine approval”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}