Court Overturns Heritage Block on McPhillamys Gold Mine

A federal court has overturned the heritage order that stopped Regis Resources from building a waste dam for its McPhillamys gold project at Blayney.

Justice James Stellios ruled the 2024 declaration by former environment minister Tanya Plibersek was invalid. Regis had challenged the order, made under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act The Guardian. It had blocked a tailings storage facility, the engineered pond used to hold leftover rock and liquid waste, in the headwaters of the Belubula River.

The protection request came from the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation. It covered the headwaters and springs of the Belubula River as a place central to creation stories. The declaration applied to the same ground proposed for mine waste infrastructure.

Regis said the order would make the project unviable. McPhillamys sits near Bathurst in the NSW Central West and was valued at $1 billion AFR. The constraint was locational. Without that dam site, the mine as designed could not proceed.

The history was not linear. The federal government first rejected the protection request for the McPhillamys area, then reversed that position in September 2024 NIT. Plibersek herself noted the significance of the site was disputed. Regis argued the government had not followed proper process.

The broader context here is how section 10 works. It gives the minister a last-resort power to protect heritage, but that power must be used fairly and within legal limits. Judicial review works like a referee checking the rules. It tests whether the decision was lawful, not whether the heritage claim is correct.

Looking at what this means in practice, invalidity removes the legal barrier. It does not settle the dispute over significance. It does not approve the dam. The corporation's claim remains on the record. The company's viability claim remains contested. A future decision will need to fix the legal error while dealing with the same overlap of protected headwaters and planned tailings site.

In my view, the judgment says little about the heritage dispute itself and much about process risk. Resource projects often need state planning consent and Commonwealth heritage clearance on parallel tracks. A defect on one track can stall the whole project. When ministers use last-resort powers where significance is disputed and commercial effects are direct, the record must be built to survive review.