Gold mine threat to Kokoda Trail
An Australian mining company has expressed outrage over Prime Minister John Howard's call to stop gold and copper mining around Papua New Guinea's famed Kokoda Track.
Mr Howard said the 96km track over the Owen Stanley ranges where more than 600 Australian soldiers died during World War II was of enormous historic significance to Australia and he would do whatever he could to stop mining there.
He last week sent a high-level delegation to PNG to inspect the proposed mining area where Gold Coast-based company Frontier Resources plans to extract an estimated $1.7 billion worth of gold and copper.
"We obviously respect the laws of Papua New Guinea but the Kokoda Trail is of enormous historic and military significance to Australia and there has to be a way that fairness and justice can be done to all interests," Mr Howard said.
But Frontier's managing director Peter McNeil told AAP today the prime minister's call to stop mining going ahead was "quite frankly, appalling" and an attempt to deny the development rights of local landowners.
"It's an attempt to force our Australian attitude in relation to a particular battle on to private landowners or clans that actually own the Kokoda Trail and who are in desperate need of development."
Landowners saw the Kodu mineral deposit as their best chance of development for generations to come and said they got "diddly-squat" from tourism and trekking on the track, Mr McNeil said.
"Ecotourism on the Kokoda Trail is rubbish in my opinion," he said in reference to the waste left by thousands of trekkers and porters each year.
"That's a lot of excrement on the trail and in the headwaters of their creeks, not properly contained.
"I do not believe that the diggers who served on the trail would support making the trail into a memorial to their efforts as opposed to allowing the people to attempt to better themselves using the natural resources they are blessed enough to have."
Mr McNeil said his company's exploration activities had not impacted on the trail, future activities were not planned to impact on the trail and any future mining would be done in world's best practice with the goal of not impacting on the trail.
He said he wouldn't be surprised if landowners shut down the track in protest at Mr Howard's attempt to deny them their right to benefits from development such as jobs and mining royalties.
Australian Opposition veterans affairs spokesman Alan Griffin said Labor fully backed any steps the government would take to protect the track.
Comment was being sought from the PNG government.
