Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association of WA president Mike Lucas believes an attempt by the Department of Mines and Petroleum to eradicate the practice of data mining will lead to the advent of desktop peggers.

The DMP announced this week it was to unveil a new online system to combat data mining whereby companies use software to scan DMP online systems to identify tenements immediately after being surrendered by the previous owner.

Making a direct reference to the man famously known as the midnight pegger, Mr Lucas said DMP efforts would likely exacerbate the problem for small-time miners.

”The other day we had this thing about this loophole that used to be in the Tengraph system of the mines department, but now they have advertised it so everyone knows about it and we are going to have these bloody desktop peggers going on everywhere. And because we’ve got 10 days to put this in when you do a peg, people are going to be backdating it left right and centre”, he said.

”The DMP said there were some people getting into that system and using it not in the spirit of the game, instead of fixing it they’ve told everyone how to do it.”