MRT new rules and Licences

Has anyone recently purchased a prospecting licence for $35.00 for 1 yr. Well as of yesterday the fee has come down to $32.40 and now is valid for 5 years. Grrr so I only renewed mine and today I called MRT to see if they could change it to the 5 yrs considering I have just recently renewed mine and they refused. I really think this is wrong and for anyone who has recently renewed theirs should at least be able to be changed to the new 5 yrs time. What are your thoughts?

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Well that sounds like a mixed blessing…
Good that MRT have listened and made the prospecting licence better value for money, and more in line with the other states.
Bad luck with it’s timing in your case :roll_eyes:, however take heart that next years renewal will give you a lot more mileage!
Now, go find the good stuff :grin:
cheers

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Celebrate the changes and move on
Phil

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Well, it’s good news.

Now to the stuff that makes the biggest difference on the ground: having to get written permission from mining companies to access ground under Exploration License, when there is no incentive on them to agree and no consequences when they don’t. In many cases even getting them to reply is impossible.

We should be following what Victoria do: no permission is needed for access to an EL.

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Now that would be nice, as long as there is no machinery or deep holes we should be able to access ELs, with conditions for both parties.

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Hi all he’s mrt news with prospecting licence terms been a win for tassie prospectors the pmat committee is gunna have a meet in the next month so if anyone got any thoughts or ideas or issues they want addressing just contact a committee member or put it up on the forum gives the club a focus an a voice for prospectors in tassie the one that keeps popping up is ELs. im abit undecided it sucks that some of these companys r stiching ground up an doing nothing else but if i had a EL i would wana no whos going on the ground an what they finding which is the hole point of exploration it costs for a EL a member has made a comment that trying
Twice with writtern permission an if no reply 3 letter to the mrt an put pressure on mrt to chase them up or even give premission anyway any feedback would b great
A[quote=“Stozki, post:1, topic:338, full:true”]
Has anyone recently purchased a prospecting licence for $35.00 for 1 yr. Well as of yesterday the fee has come down to $32.40 and now is valid for 5 years. Grrr so I only renewed mine and today I called MRT to see if they could change it to the 5 yrs considering I have just recently renewed mine and they refused. I really think this is wrong and for anyone who has recently renewed theirs should at least be able to be changed to the new 5 yrs time. What are your thoughts?
[/quote]

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Made a shambles of that post big fingers on a small
phone dont help hope all should b able to decipher cheers

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Hi guys, I’m new here! Found the place by looking for prospecting requirements in Tasmania. Sorry for digging up an older thread.

Anyway I’ve noticed you have some concerns regarding the requirements of prospectors obtaining permission from exploration licence holders. Have you guys had any success or conversations trying to get this changed? I think it’s absolute rubbish that so much of the state is locked up under exploration and that prospectors need to get permission. So far I’ve had a knock back for one and a no reply for another 2 tenement holders – so much for trying to do the right thing.

What experience do you guys have?

Cheers

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Coupla years ago i emailed one holder several times , and wrote twice including a stamped and addressed envelope . The holder could not even be bothered to just write no on the the envelope and throw it in the mail ! The system is a bit twisted .

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That’s so rude - maybe we should get a petition together to try and get the rules changed? The absolute stupid thing about this is that you can access the same places for any other recreational activity you want! (provided the land tenure permits eg. crown). Riding a dirtbike is going to have more of environmental impact than doing some panning.

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I got a bit of strange response from when I was talking to a couple of people from the MRT stand at the Hobart gem show about the new exploration licence EL8/2020 in the south west because I’ll have stop now because of the exploration licence , the response * was almost like* oh yeah don’t stress to much its a big area and its unlikely anyone would ever get caught …??? it felt like really didn’t care…?

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Here is my personal opinion on what most MRT staff know about the law as it pertains to prospecting: nothing.

I have it in writing from the Director of Mines that a prospecting licence does not allow you to own anything you find while prospecting.

MRT will also insist that you cannot sell gold that you find while prospecting. The law does not say this and in fact hints the opposite.

Finally, the trend I’ve seen in the last 20 years or so is of MRT making things gradually harder for prospectors on paper, yet not policing any of this. When real trouble crops up, the response from MRT staff has often been “just shut it all down, we don’t need the hassle”. They allow people like a certain landowner in Moorina intimidate and harass prospectors and cause untold environmental damage with no repercussions. They allow mining companies to not reply to prospectors because there is no onus or incentive for them to do so. There are helpful staff at MRT, but from where I stand their voice is rarely heard.

I am currently spending my hard earned cash for three months in Western Australia, partly because they take prospectors seriously and have a system that works. I could be spending this money in Tassie. This is a common story that you’ll hear pretty often.

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Got this email on Friday in regards to ELs …all lease holders etc received it

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Interesting, will make it easier if there is contact details on mrt site.

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It’s good to see that they are hearing us. I would still love to see action from MRT beyond just writing to leaseholders and asking to please do the right thing.

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Anyone tried contacting lease owners recently since that letter went out? This amount of leases being granted and land being locked up to recreational prospectors is getting ridiculous. Can’t go anywhere according to this!

I think we need to petition to get prospecting terms updated in the Mineral Resources Development Act. From what I can gather, in Victoria they have 2 types of prospector –

  1. Prospecting Licence/Leases - These are serious prospectors who can do small scale mining, basically staking a claim (Size of area is limited)
  2. Miners Right – this is basically a recreational prospecting/fossicking licence that allows you to undertake said activity. With a miners right you don’t need to gain permission from exploration lease holders to access the land.

I think we would have pretty good grounds to all write in and request this gets changed to reflect the recreation side of things. Our prospecting licences are classified as “Recreational” and have absolutely no impact on a 500ha exploration lease. The Act does not refer to recreational, only prospecting alone.

A Tasmanian born citizen is unable to legally run a few pans of creek wash in the deepest, wildest parts of Tasmania there is without seeking permission from an exploration lease holder who may be a foreign company. But on the other hand, you can go camping, bushwalking & any other activity you want on the exact same land without needing any permission. Yeah that makes perfect sense.

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Hi @Prospector, from what I recall of happenings nearly 30 years ago, MRT had the law changed away from this exact situation (when you were able to mark a claim and work it as a prospector) to what we have now.

Now, my recollection and that of others who were around when the new act started to be implemented post-1995 is that the new (1995) act clearly differentiated between fossicking and prospecting precisely because the former was intended to be more of a hobby, and the latter is not necessarily so.

In my recollection, this is why the Act says specifically that fossicking is of a non-commercial nature only, but puts no such restrictions on prospecting. It is also why the act does not say that permissions are needed for fossicking, but makes getting permission mandatory for prospecting.

The act intended, in my recollection, to stop people pegging a particular piece of ground, but did not attempt to restrict prospecting as a potential income-earning activity.

Also, the act never said (and still does not say) that fossicking is restricted to designated fossicking areas, only that fossicking was to be non-commercial only, and here are a bunch of fossicking areas to get you started.

In the intervening time, MRT has developed its own in-house culture and policies, and unfortunately most of the staff you might talk to now believe that the only difference between fossicking and prospecting is that the former is carried out inside designated fossicking areas, and for everything outside of these you need a prospecting licence.

In my personal opinion, this is just their opinion and not backed by law.

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rules’
Hi Miguel,
You are spot on, we all paying our dues for a prospecting licence but can’t get on any good promising areas as these are taking up by big companies who refuse to let a hobby prospector to go fossick on their lease , stating safety issues. As PMAT we may have a bit of clout to change this if we are all together challenge it, maybe with the help of lots of members from state wide lapidary clubs who are more or less facing the same problem.
Cheers
Ray

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