Arrival and registration 

Welcome and Introductions 

Tailings and Mine Waste 

Future-Ready Mining in Western Australia: Policy, Accountability and Lifecycle Stewardship

In this opening address, the Minister will outline the Western Australian Government’s vision for a future-ready mining sector - one that is underpinned by strong regulation, transparent governance, and lifecycle accountability from development through to closure.

The address will focus on the State’s evolving policy and regulatory approach as tailings management and mine closure transition from historically separate considerations to core components of responsible resource development.
It will highlight how Western Australia is strengthening oversight, embedding risk-based frameworks, and aligning with global expectations such as the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management.

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The Minister will emphasise the importance of leadership, governance, and industry accountability in safeguarding communities and maintaining public trust, while acknowledging lessons learned from global tailings incidents.

The address will also reinforce the importance of integrating closure planning and post-mining land use into early project decision-making, ensuring long-term environmental, social, and economic outcomes are considered from the outset.

Positioning Western Australia as a global leader in responsible resource development, the Minister will highlight the importance of collaboration between government, industry, and stakeholders to deliver safe, sustainable, and future-focused mining practices

As tailings governance shifts from voluntary best practices to mandatory regulatory compliance, WA’s mining industry faces increasing scrutiny over safety, environmental impact, and ESG accountability. This session explores the new regulatory landscape for tailings management, highlighting the move from guidelines to enforceable requirements and the implications for operators and engineers

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Delegates will gain insights into:

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• The evolving regulatory framework in Australia and WA in 2026.

• Differences between voluntary compliance programs and mandatory regulation.

• Practical strategies for risk accountability, ESG integration, and board-level oversight.

• Lessons from global tailings incidents and proactive compliance examples.

• Tools and technologies supporting monitoring, reporting, and risk mitigation.

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Attendees will leave equipped with actionable strategies to navigate compliance, safeguard communities, and enhance ESG performance in the era of mandatory tailings governance.

Western Australia is home to over 800 tailings storage facilities (TSFs), a critical part of the State’s significant mining sector.

This session will provide an in‑depth look at the current regulatory framework governing TSFs in WA in 2026, how risk‑based categorisation shapes inspection and audit requirements, and how operators are expected to demonstrate design rigour, monitoring and ongoing compliance.

It will also examine how lessons from international incidents inform local practice and reinforce WA’s focus on safety, environmental protection and continuous improvement.

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Delegates will come away with a clear understanding of how the Western Australian regulatory regime - rooted in the Mines Safety and Inspection Act 1994, Mining Act 1978 and the State’s TSF Codes of Practice and Guidelines - integrates technical design, operational oversight, consequence‑based categorisation, and audit processes to mitigate risks associated with mine waste storage.

The governance approach in WA continues to evolve based on global failures (e.g., Vale’s Brumadinho) and local historical incidents, emphasising adaptive regulatory improvement.​

Morning tea 

The tailings pipeline is more than a service line -it fundamentally influences TSF layout, staging, capacity, and overall cost. Many challenges often attributed to geotechnical or operational factors can instead be traced back to misaligned assumptions around tailings transport made during the design phase.

This presentation explores the critical interface between TSF and pipeline design, highlighting where integration is most often overlooked.

It will also examine practical strategies available to project teams to optimise system alignment and reduce water reporting to the TSF.​​

Since the release of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM), there has been heightened focus on tolerable risk criteria and their role in TSF decision-making.

While risk tolerability has a long history in other industries -particularly water dam safety -limited historical data have constrained contextual understanding of TSF risk profiles.

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This presentation analyses existing TSF databases to produce FN charts (annual frequency of N or more fatalities), enabling comparison with current industry target tolerability limits.

These outputs offer a reference point for practitioners to inform risk management decisions, whether or not tolerability limits are formally adopted.

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The study also highlights the distinction between societal and individual tolerability limits.

Societal limits guide overall community safety expectations, while individual limits aim to ensure that no person bears a disproportionate risk -often set 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than societal thresholds. For individuals living or working near TSFs, achieving compliance with these stricter limits remains challenging.

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While the historical data provide insight into past and current TSF safety practices, definitive conclusions regarding individual risk tolerability were not possible, emphasizing the ongoing need for transparent, data-driven, and socially-informed risk management approaches in TSF governance.

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This analysis encourages discussion on whether current tolerability levels are sufficient and whether new targets should be considered for both societal and individual safety in mining operations.

The mining industry is under increasing pressure to enhance tailings management, reduce environmental risk, and comply with evolving standards such as the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM).

This session will explore innovative tailings technologies that transform how mine waste is processed and stored now and into perpetuity. Key discussion points include:
•    Filtered (“dry stack”) tailings: Practical deployment and how this approach changes facility design, operational safety, and water management, including considerations for greenfield and brownfield sites
•    Thickened tailings: while thickening is not a new technology it is finding new application, often paired with mud farming to aid density gain in the field. The result can be facilities that are similar to that achieved with filtration with many of the associated geotechnical and environmental benefits
•    In-pit disposal: Analogous to backfill in underground operations, this technique offers significant simplicity and risk reduction, but interaction with groundwater is often a key challenge that requires a different skillset to manage than that possessed by the typical tailings engineer. 

Sponsor's note  : Dredge Robotics 

Q & A 

Lunch  

Mine Closure and Legacy Landform 

Sponsors note : Earthlok  

Mine closure in Western Australia is evolving from a compliance exercise conducted at the end of mining operations to a strategic, integrated discipline embedded across the life of mine.

With the introduction of the Mining Development and Closure Proposal (MDCP) framework (effective 9 September 2025), proponents are now required to present a unified development and closure plan at the outset of approvals, ensuring closure objectives are integrated into mine design, environmental approvals, and tenement conditions from day 1.

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This session provides delegates with a practical guide to embedding closure into feasibility, design, and operational planning, focusing on measurable completion criteria, rehabilitation sequencing, climate- and water-resilient landforms, and financial provisioning.

Using WA operational examples, the presentation demonstrates how early integration reduces regulatory risk, cost escalation, and operational uncertainty, while delivering predictable, measurable closure outcomes aligned with investor and stakeholder expectations.​

Mine closure outcomes are largely determined by decisions made during design and day to day operations, often decades before closure execution. This industry perspective shares practical lessons on embedding closure thinking across the mine life to manage risk, retain flexibility and support achievable closure outcomes in complex operating environments.

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Key discussion points include:
•    Robust closure in design: Practical approaches to incorporating closure considerations from project inception, supporting alignment with operational, environmental and community objectives. 
•    Risk management and stakeholder engagement: Approaches to manage environmental, social, and regulatory risks, and engage meaningfully with Traditional Owners, communities and key stakeholders.
•    Managing change and uncertainty: Maintaining closure intent over long mine lives as plans, information, people and expectations evolve
•    The closure business case: Integrating closure considerations into everyday operations to reduce long term liability and support investment confidence in closure execution
•    Post-mining outcomes: Examples highlighting land rehabilitation, repurposing, and economic opportunities arising from effective closure planning.

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Attendees will gain practical insight into linking technical closure strategies with sustainable, place based outcomes, informed by real world experience from an experienced mine closure professional.

In 2026, mine closure in Australia is undergoing a fundamental shift-from a technical rehabilitation exercise to a complex legal and intergenerational liability issue.
While regulatory frameworks in Western Australia now require increasingly detailed Mine Closure Plans and Completion Reports, the real challenge lies beyond compliance: achieving genuine relinquishment of tenure and resolving long-term residual risk.
 
Despite structured pathways for closure and rehabilitation under the Mining Act 1978 (WA), industry and government continue to face a persistent reality - few mining operations are ever fully “released” from liability once operations cease. Even where closure criteria are met, obligations may extend through environmental, cultural heritage, and native title frameworks, creating uncertainty around final handback and long-term accountability.
 
At the same time, native title and Traditional Owner engagement is becoming a defining factor in closure outcomes.
Agreements negotiated during operations are increasingly being tested at the point of closure, where expectations around land condition, compensation, and ongoing stewardship often extend well beyond original approvals. This has elevated closure from a regulatory endpoint to a contested legal and social transition phase, particularly in regions where heritage protection, cultural continuity, and land access rights remain central issues.
 
A growing concern across the sector is the lack of a clear, consistent pathway to relinquishment across Australia, with limited precedent for true transfer of liability back to the State. 
This creates ongoing exposure for proponents, particularly where residual environmental risk, legacy infrastructure, or unresolved cultural heritage matters remain.
 
This session will explore how mining companies, legal advisers, and regulators are responding to this evolving landscape—where closure is no longer defined by rehabilitation alone, but by whether liability can ever truly be extinguished. It will examine the intersection of native title obligations, regulatory closure frameworks, and the rising expectation of enduring accountability for post-mining land.
 
Key themes include:

•    Why “closure” does not currently equal “relinquishment” in practice 
•    The legal gap between rehabilitation completion and liability transfer 
•    Native title and heritage obligations extending into post-closure phases 
•    Increasing uncertainty around residual environmental and social risk 
•    The future of closure frameworks: toward shared or perpetual stewardship models 

Q & A and Panel 

Afternoon Tea 

Post-Mining Land Use (PMLU) is now a central focus of closure planning in 2026. Regulators, investors, and communities are scrutinising not just the physical rehabilitation but how land will function after closure, whether for environmental restoration, renewable energy projects, or other economic activities and how this aligns with visions for the region’s future.
 
This session explores how integrating PMLU and multi-stakeholder planning models into the life-of-mine planning phase enhances community and regulatory confidence, unlocks economic opportunities, supports ESG objectives and builds pathways to relinquishment.

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Key Topics covered:
 
•    Collaborative planning models and quantitative PMLU evaluation
•    Aligning closure plans with land use objectives (ecological, industrial, community)
•    Incorporating PMLU into mine design and rehabilitation sequencing
•    Strategies for multi-purpose land use after closure (renewable energy, ecological restoration, agribusiness)
•    Communicating post-mining plans to regulators, investors, and communities
 

Learning Outcomes:
 
•    Understand the importance of defining and delivering supported post-mining land outcomes
•    Develop PMLU strategies that integrate with rehabilitation and closure milestones
•    Create a robust business case for alternative PMLU pathways
•    Learn to balance economic, environmental, and social objectives
•    Build stakeholder confidence through transparent PMLU planning

Bauxite residue (commonly known as red mud) is a highly alkaline by-product generated during alumina refining and remains one of the aluminium industry’s most complex environmental challenges.

Globally, bauxite residue storage facilities cover approximately 17,000 hectares of land, yet less than 1% has been successfully rehabilitated and relinquished for alternative land uses. Conventional approaches to rehabilitation typically rely on expensive earthworks and containment strategies that stabilise residue but do not deliver long-term ecological outcomes.

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This presentation introduces a nature-based ecological engineering approach developed through more than 15 years of field-based, industry-partnered research across multiple climate zones. The methodology enables the systematic mineralogical, geochemical, and biophysical transformation of bio-toxic bauxite residue into a productive soil system resembling natural lateritic soils. Through carefully designed ecological processes, the treated residue develops stable soil structure, supports diverse microbial communities, and establishes self-sustaining nutrient cycling without the need for ongoing fertiliser inputs.

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The resulting eco-engineered soil can be harvested within 2-3 years for use in the remediation of severely degraded landscapes, or utilised in situ to construct stable landforms with functional soil profiles.

Field trials demonstrate the development of persistent vegetation cover and long-term ecosystem function, supported by ongoing natural bioweathering processes and stable interfaces between engineered soil layers and underlying residue.

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By moving beyond containment-focused approaches, this work demonstrates how nature-based design can transform bauxite residue rehabilitation, enabling more sustainable mine closure outcomes and creating new opportunities for land restoration and post-mining land use.

Securing sufficient quality topsoil remains one of the most persistent challenges in progressive mine rehabilitation across Australia.

In many Queensland operations, topsoil depths vary significantly, and available volumes are often inadequate to support final landform objectives.

Additionally, both topsoil and subsoil resources may contain physical and chemical constraints that limit vegetation establishment.

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This presentation introduces a structured, evidence-based framework for developing manufactured growth media to address topsoil deficits and support achievement of the proposed Post-Mining Land Use (PMLU).

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Initiated by the Queensland Office of the Mine Rehabilitation Commissioner, the project combines insights from an industry survey of environmental professionals with an extensive literature review to identify common soil constraints and practical amelioration strategies.

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The session outlines a five-stage approach:

• Defining the PMLU and determining soil performance requirements

• Identifying and characterising available growth media resources

• Developing tailored growth media strategies, including constraint identification and amelioration design

• Trialling amendment strategies under site conditions

• Implementing ongoing monitoring and adaptive management

• The framework emphasises early material characterisation, strategic soil inventory management, and site-specific amendment design to transform subsoil and spoil into functional growth media.

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By shifting from reliance on scarce topsoil to engineered growth systems, operators can reduce closure risk, improve vegetation outcomes, and enhance regulatory confidence.

The approach provides a practical, scalable pathway to achieve resilient landforms and sustainable PMLU outcomes where natural topsoil resources are limited.

Includes Audience Q & A  

Networking and depart