Stow v Mineral Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd [1979] HCA 30

High Court of Australia Barwick C.J. Stephen, Mason, Murphy and Aickin JJ. Stow v Mineral Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd [1979] HCA 30

ORDER Appeal dismissed with costs.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

June 22 Barwick C.J.

This appeal arises out of an application under s. 15A of the Mining Act 1929 as amended Tas ("the Act"), for a special prospector's licence. The Act, like most mining legislation in Australia, has been concerned with the encouragement of mining. No express and certainly no mandatory provision is made for the consideration in relation to the grant of mining licences or tenures of the impact of that activity on the more abiding features and values of the environment. This Court, however, can only be concerned in this case with the construction and application of the Act as it stands.

I have had the advantage of reading the reasons for judgment prepared in this matter by my brother Aickin. I am thus relieved of any necessity to recite the relevant facts and circumstances or the applicable statutory provisions.

The appeal raises, first, whether the applicants or any of them were competent under the Act to object to the granting of the respondent's application for the special prospector's licence; secondly, whether the warden of mines had jurisdiction to decide whether in law or in fact they had any relevant estate or interest in the subject land; thirdly, whether the objections they purported to raise were in their nature objections within the meaning and scope of s. 15C(3) of the Act; fourthly, whether the warden of mines, in hearing and determining these objections, was the warden's court within the meaning of the Act, that is to say, whether he was then acting in a judicial capacity: see definition of warden's court in s. 2(1).