Mr CLAYTON BARR (Cessnock) (18:51): I speak again about the terrible injustice placed on Howarth Drilling as a result of decisions made by this Parliament. For the benefit of Hansard, this contribution can be titled, “Howarth Drilling Part 3”. To recap, in January 2014 both Houses of Parliament were recalled during the summer break to pass two pieces of legislation. One of those pieces of legislation was to rescind, take back or repeal licensing leases for coalmining. Three coalmines, or potential coalmines, were affected at the time, one of which was Doyles Creek mine. At that time, it was owned by NuCoal Mining, which in turn was owned by shareholders. NuCoal was the third company to own that lease, so it was three times removed from any potential source of corruption, wherever it happened in the background. NuCoal engaged a family drilling company called Howarth Drilling to test the ground under the surface by drilling boreholes so that they could see exactly what was down there and where they would be best placed to start their mining operations.
Howarth Drilling was engaged to do that work as a consequence of 25 years of industry involvement. At that stage Howarth Drilling was valued at about $20 million, but it was very much a mum-and-dad company with third-generation employees. Unfortunately, a decision made in this Parliament suddenly and retrospectively took away that lease. In other contributions I have spoken about the impact on the Howarth family, and last time I also spoke about the massive financial injustice. Today I will talk about the rule of law. In a speech, Barry O’Farrell talked about abrogating the common law. Interestingly, we have free trade agreements with a number of nations, one of which is the United States of America. That agreement was negotiated during 2005.
In those negotiations, the United States had a concern about the structure of our Federation. It was concerned whether negotiations with the Australian Federal Government would extend to the State Government. At the time, during negotiations, the Australian Government assured the United States that it did not need to worry about talking to the States individually because “we are a nation that abides by the rule of law”. The United States ultimately signed the free trade agreement under those conditions and assurances. Fast forward to 2014 when the lease was repealed and all the investors from the United States lost their money. Fast forward again to 2015 when the United States trade agreement was under review and the conversation again came up about that particular lease and licence in New South Wales, it turned out that we were not necessarily a State that abided by the rule of law. The United States reminded the Australian Government about its comment from 10 years ago and surmised, “You misled us.” That was a damning indictment on our country.
The United States was not the only affected investor. There were investors from Japan and Korea, there were some really large multinational companies involved in that, and about 3,500 small local investors. Yes, we are talking about some corporate investors at a large industrial scale, but we are also talking about mums and dads. One particular family that had invested their life savings and superannuation et cetera was the Lantry family. The Lantry family have a disabled child who will need to be looked after for the rest of his life. Of course, the NDIS would be a part of that, but the family wanted to do the very best they could by him, so they invested their life savings into the venture.
Little did they know that despite the company that was conducting operations being three times separated from any Minister of this State, little did they know that New South Wales had the ability to come back to a company and say, “We know you have a lease signed by a Minister of the Crown, but we’re going to take that back.” That was the effect on all of those mum-and-dad investors, that was the effect on Howarth Drilling and that was the effect on NuCoal and all of our international investors. That was a significant moment to have happened in this place and in New South Wales. None of those people are getting any compensation. But the Shenhua company at Liverpool Plains got compensated and when the light rail was going on, the small businesses around here got compensated. The Howarth family is right to ask, “Where is our compensation?”