In 2013, ClarkeKann reported on the Agripower Australia
decision in which the Queensland Supreme Court held, in a
controversial decision, that the Building & Construction
Industry Payments Act 2004 (BCIPA) did not apply to construction
work on land subject to a mining lease. The decision left much
uncertainty about the extent to which BCIPA applied in the mining
industry. That uncertainty was largely cleared up by the appeal
decision delivered in late 2013.
Initially, the Supreme Court held that mining leases were not
'land' for the purposes of BCIPA and that as such temporary
buildings and structures constructed on a mining lease did not form
part of the land. The Court of Appeal preferred to give the word
'land' its ordinary (as opposed to legal) meaning, finding
that the degree of annexation to the physical land will be relevant
to the issue of whether or not a thing forms part of the land for
the purposes of BCIPA.
