Wendy and her husband Tony are facing off against a coal giant in a landmark case in the High Court. It’s the first ever climate case to reach the High Court, and if won, it could have far-reaching impacts for fossil fuel project approvals.
The Case
Meet Wendy: a retired science teacher from the Hunter Valley, who is facing up to coal behemoth MACH Energy in the High Court. Wendy is the President of Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group INC (DAMS HEG), her local environment community group, whose membership includes her husband, Tony.
Down the road from Tony and Wendy’s home lies the colossal, gurgling Mount Pleasant coal mine. MACH Energy’s coal mine is already huge, but it's threatening to become even bigger: a prospect Tony, Wendy, and their community group could not stand idly by and accept.
Wendy and Tony’s case has the enormous potential to force governments to reckon with the truth: that Australia’s exported fossil fuels, sold and burnt overseas, contribute a monstrous amount to climate harm in Australia, and hurt all of our communities.
The giant mine looms large in Tony and Wendy’s lives: the quiet of the night is now interrupted by the low rumble of machinery, star gazing with grandchildren is contaminated by a constant artificial glow, the air is polluted with dust.
But it’s the onslaught of catastrophic climate impacts that haunts them the most. In the last decade, their region has been hit by unprecedented droughts, floods, and bushfires.
If the expansion of the MACH Energy mine went ahead, it would become one of Australia’s largest coal export mines - larger than the Adani mine. Wendy and Tony know that burning the coal from this mine - even on the other side of the world - will mean more climate impacts in their community.
Wendy and Tony's case shows how governments are doing creative accounting to exclude the emissions from Australian fossil fuels burned overseas, when looking at project approvals. Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world — to exclude these emissions from consideration just doesn’t stack up. It’s fudging the numbers.
So Wendy and Tony stood up for what’s right. They stood up to MACH Energy in court, with the help of their expert legal team at Johnson Legal. And they WON, setting a game-changing precedent that means that government authorities have to consider the impact of these exported emissions on NSW communities.
Now MACH Energy is appealing, and Tony and Wendy are defending their extraordinary precedent. A win in the High Court would cement their precedent changing how fossil fuel projects are approved in NSW and potentially beyond.
