A new government regulation has been issued that makes important changes to the regulatory regime for mineral and coal mining business activities.
Promoting investment certainty is clearly one of the agendas behind the new government regulation. However, it is apparent that the new government regulation has also been motivated, in part, by other agendas that have resulted in it becoming possible, for the first time, for “religious community organizations” to obtain special mining business licenses. This latter agenda has been the source of considerable public controversy.
In this article, the writer will review the principal changes that have been made to the regulatory regime for mineral and coal mining business activities before discussing their significance and what they may tell us about what actually determines the evolution of local mining industry regulation.