Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney said the federal government had raised no new substantive issues in relation to the Queensland coordinator-general's decision last week to approve the Alpha project and should now meet its commitments under the state-federal bilateral agreement and make a decision on the project within 30 days.
"[Federal Environment] Minister [Tony] Burke last week said there were deficiencies in the Queensland evaluation and approvals process," Seeney said.
"I asked the federal minister to detail what they were. It took him two days to provide the information and when he did it was nothing more than a rehash of comments previously provided to the coordinator-general."
Seeney said those matters had been taken into account in the coordinator-general's report which provided conditional approval for the mine to proceed to the next stage.
"Some of the matters raised were outside the scope of this assessment and will be finalised as part of other assessment processes,” he said. “Others were simply differences of opinion, comments on wording, or challenges to the advice of scientific experts used by the proponent.
"The coordinator-general's office will respond to the Commonwealth comments while the approval process continues as normal under the bilateral agreement between the state and Commonwealth.
"The coordinator-general set 128 conditions for the proponent of the Alpha Coal project – GVK-Hancock – to meet as they proceed to construction.
"Among those conditions are requirements for further significant and detailed work on potential environmental impacts and the measures needed to offset and mitigate those potential impacts that must be done prior to construction."
Seeney said surveys and modelling carried out to date were adequate for assessment of impacts for this stage of the project and for the coordinator-general to provide conditional approval.
"The model used actually over-estimates the extent of environmental impacts."
Seeney said it was open to the federal government to impose further conditions.
The Alpha project in the Galilee Basin includes six open cut mines and a 495km railway line to the Abbot Point terminal.
