Wendy, Tony and their community in the Upper Hunter stood up to a fossil fuel giant and won.
Wendy and Tony are retired science teachers and farmers who live in the shadow of the Mt Pleasant coal mine. Yesterday they beat coal mining giant MACH Energy in the High Court of Australia with their lawyers at Johnson Legal and with support from Grata Fund.
"Today the High Court has said what we have always known: we cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and then pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us.”
- Wendy Wales, President of DAMS HEG and co-plaintiff
The Court upheld the NSW Court of Appeal's decision to overturn approval of MACH Energy's massive expansion. It found the NSW Independent Planning Commission had to consider imposing conditions to reduce the harm from all the mine's emissions, including from coal burned overseas. The Commission failed to do so, which means the approval was invalid.
The stakes are enormous. The expansion would have produced around 870 million tonnes of CO₂ pollution, about double Australia's entire annual emissions. MACH Energy planned to export 98% of the coal, but the harm would come home to Wendy and Tony’s community with more bushfires, droughts, floods and extreme heat.
The project now goes back to the NSW Land and Environment Court or the Commission for a proper assessment of its impacts.
The impact of Wendy and Tony’s win extends far beyond their case, with potential implications for big polluters Australia-wide. In NSW alone, there are 17 fossil fuel planning proposals that the IPC must now consider imposing emission-minimising conditions on.
Thank you to the Grata Community for supporting Tony and Wendy, the DAMS HEG community group, and their legal team at Johnson Legal for making this case possible.
It doesn’t end here.
- This week, Albanese Government ministers stood before Pacific leaders at the pre-COP in Fiji and promised to cut climate pollution.
- Last week, the NSW Independent Planning Commission approved the Hunter Valley Operations coal mine expansion. It now sits on the Commonwealth's desk.
- If signed off, it will be the 38th coal or gas project the Albanese Government has approved this year.
By backing communities like Wendy and Tony’s, together we are helping to close the gap between words and action. This is what’s possible when we work together to hold power to account.