Unfortunately for us, there is also a bad minority that make a mess in their quest for easy money - they flout the prospecting guidelines and give us all a bad name. With restricted access, policing becomes easier, if largely unnecessary. Opening more areas, if and when it happens, will naturally come with increased costs to our Victorian Miner's Right to pay for increased policing of the prospecting areas. Given my distance from major gold producing areas, I am pretty happy with the licensing cost vs time spent ratio that I can personally manage at the moment; if costs went up I would have to seriously reconsider my interest in the hobby.