Julman Hente and Nursodik Nursodik (both IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo) have posted Central and Regional Authority in the Regulation of Mineral and Coal Mining: A Comparative Study of Indonesia and Australia on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Authority over mineral and coal mining in Indonesia has swung like a pendulum since the reform era: from broad decentralisation under Law No 22 of 1999, to strengthened provincial authority under Law No 23 of 2014, to full recentralisation to the Central Government under Law No 3 of 2020 and its further extension under Law No 2 of 2025. This article tests the validity of that recentralisation through a framework of attribution, delegation and subsidiarity, and compares it functionally with the Australian model, in which mineral ownership rests constitutionally with the States and Commonwealth intervention is confined to matters of national significance. Using doctrinal, comparative and socio-legal methods, the article finds that Indonesia’s recentralisation lacks the objective criteria that anchor the Australian design, and that this gap produces a deficit of dignified justice—evident in social conflict in Pohuwato Regency, fiscal inequality in mining-producing regions, and conflict-of-interest risk in the expanded pool of special licence holders. The article proposes a Central-Regional Collaborative Oversight Body as a tiered authority design that reconciles investment certainty with justice for producing regions, and situates the comparison within Australia’s own critical-minerals partnership with Indonesia.
Recommended!
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