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State Government geoscientific funding and activities (Section 4.1) • The state budget allocated $5.1 million towards accelerating mineral exploration, through targeted geoscience initiatives and data technologies to provide industry ready data. • There is strong support for the Collaborative Exploration Initiative (CEI), calling for its continuation beyond 2027.
• Four successful projects in the Bowen Basin received funding totalling $21 million through the Frontier Gas Exploration Grants Program. Regulatory and policy stability (Section 4.2) • There were several favourable changes to regulatory controls observed in the last 12 months: increased land release for gas and petroleum exploration, release of grants for exploration, the ongoing support of the Queensland Resources Common User Facility (QRCUF), amendments to the Financial Provisioning scheme to ease compliance for juniors and the announcement of the Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive. • There are long standing regulatory challenges that face the sector: from complex and duplicative environmental regulation to the unprecedented coal royalty rate that has been extended through 2028–29. Operating and investment sentiment (Section 4.3 & 4.4) • There’s a continuation of the improved sentiment observed last year, indicating the industry is hopeful. • Compared to the outlook measured last year there is a 15 point increase in those who expect to substantially increase exploration spending over the next 12 months. • Whilst 15 out of the 18 sentiment factors are negative, 10 of those improved compared from 2023-24 levels. • Explorers continue to struggle in the face of increased costs and complex environmental regulation. Tenure performance (Section 5) • The Government launched a targeted EOI process to nominate land for exploration including contiguous areas adjacent to existing coal and gas tenures and underexplored vanadium regions like Julia Creek. • A comprehensive review of Queensland’s land release framework was undertaken as part of the 2025 Land Release Review. The suggested changes aligned to industry calls to improve transparency, responsiveness and streamlined applications. The result of this review is not released at time of publication.
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