One Nation would scrap independent assessment of major new coal mines and hand decision-making power back to politicians as part of the resurgent right-wing party’s plan to reverse decades of planning reforms designed to limit corruption risk by removing ministerial power over major projects.
The High Court on Wednesday issued a seismic judgment in which it declared a major Hunter Valley coal mine expansion invalid, forcing NSW planning authorities to reckon for the first time with the impact of Australian coal burnt overseas.
The ruling has potentially wide-ranging ramifications. The NSW and federal Labor governments have played down its significance, calling it a narrow ruling that won’t impact other mine approvals. However, environmental groups are already privately discussing the possibility of further legal action, including against the massive Hunter Valley Operations coal mine expansion approved last week.
One Nation, which has taken an aggressively pro-coal stance as it seeks to win seats in the Hunter Valley at the state election in March, says it would deal with the issue in part by scrapping the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) entirely and giving approval power to ministers.
Such a move would undo decades of reforms, which have sought to remove the decision-making power for contentious projects from individual ministers after repeated corruption scandals. Rob Stokes, the former Coalition minister who established the planning commission in 2018, said of One Nation’s proposal: “The vested interests will love it.”
But Mike Newman, One Nation’s leader in NSW, said ministers should be “on the front line of decision-making”.
“We’re just forever tying ourselves in knots, adding more onerous layers of bureaucracy,” he said. “Ministers should be driving policies … if One Nation was elected, we are the representatives of the people, not the bureaucracy.”
Ministers in a One Nation government would be “subject to KPIs and tasked with delivery”, Newman said. They would be less susceptible to corruption because “they are not former politicians [and] don’t owe the unions”.
“If we continue to go down this path of more regulation in the way we are going, [we are going] to ruin predictability in the marketplace, which will only end up undermining long-term investment into our country,” he said.
The IPC was established in 2018, replacing the previous Planning Assessment Commission introduced by the former Labor government, in response to a series of scandals over ministerial approvals for major developments. It determines approval for certain major projects, including in cases where there are 50 or more public objections or an applicant has made a political donation.
The Minns government has made a series of changes to its functions, including increasing the threshold at which the IPC becomes the decision-making body in relation to mining projects, data centres or renewable energy. That threshold is now 100 objections from within NSW.
Stokes, the former planning minister who set it up, said the IPC had taken “backdoor politics out of big planning decisions, particularly in the resource sector”.
“The rent seekers and lobbyists hated it because they could no longer use media or threats to influence a decision on an individual project at a political level to get the outcome they wanted,” he said.
“Removing the IPC will only slow down time frames for decisions through increasing the risk of expensive litigation, as well as returning to the bad old days of arbitrary decision-making through ministerial fiat. It can only reduce public confidence in decision-making.
“If you get rid of the IPC, it means justice will be less accessible for ordinary people, particularly in regional communities.”
The High Court ruled on Wednesday that the IPC had failed to consider scope 3 emissions, caused by the burning of the coal, when weighing approval conditions to minimise emissions “to the greatest extent practicable”.
The decision, which related to MACH Energy Australia’s Mount Pleasant coal mine extension, raised the prospect of further legal challenges against other major resource projects.
Premier Chris Minns on Thursday played down the significance of the ruling, telling green groups not to get “overexcited” by what he described as a “very narrow, technical decision”.
He played down the need for legislative changes to override the judgment, saying MACH still had approval to operate until 2032.
Noting One Nation’s stated intention to unwind the state’s wider framework of emissions regulation, Minns said such a move would damage “Australia’s reputation as both a mining economy and one that cares about the environment”.
“I think you should be careful what you wish for,” he said. “We can have both a growing mining sector and continue our very high, hard-fought-for reputation for the world’s best coal and an economy and a system that cares about the environment.”
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
