Premier intervenes to ‘save jobs’ at coal mine after High Court ruling

The Hunter Valley community group that won a landmark High Court case against a coal mine expansion has accused the NSW government of legislative overreach after Premier Chris Minns vowed to grant MACH Energy approval to dig up millions of tonnes more each year.

As Labor faces significant political pressure from One Nation’s populist rise in the Hunter, Minns on Monday announced the government would pass standalone legislation to allow the Mount Pleasant mine to increase annual production to 16.5 million tonnes a year, from its current limit of 12.5 million tonnes, until 2032.

The decision prompted fury among environmental groups, which accused Labor of undermining independent planning laws and bowing to pressure from the mining lobby.

Elaine Johnson, a lawyer for the Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group, which won its High Court bid against MACH Energy earlier this month, said the decision made it appear as though “laws are being written for individual mine owners and not in the public interest”.

Unions, however, welcomed the decision. Mining and Energy Union president Grahame Kelly lauded the government for acting “with the urgency required”.

“Without urgent intervention, hundreds of mineworkers could have been out of a job by Christmas,” he said.

Minns said the decision came after MACH Energy told the government it was preparing to sack half its workforce – about 400 people – before Christmas if its approval was not expanded. In return for boosting the mine’s annual production limit, the government said the company had agreed to sign a jobs guarantee that would establish a legal obligation to maintain staffing levels.

The intervention comes after the High Court ruled a fortnight ago that a 2022 approval by the NSW Independent Planning Commission was invalid because it had failed to properly consider the climate impact of coal exported overseas from the mine.

The ruling – which found the IPC had not properly considered the impact of so-called “scope 3 emissions” – led to immediate calls from the Coalition and One Nation for Labor to urgently pass new laws overruling the High Court.

Despite initially playing down the need for legal change, Minns said Indonesian billionaire Anthoni Salim’s MACH Energy informed the government it was preparing to sack workers before Christmas. That was because it had scaled up its workforce to prepare for an increase in its production limit to 21 million tonnes a year, as previously approved by the IPC.

The government is aware that while it faces an immediate threat from One Nation in the Hunter and some parts of western Sydney, it could make itself vulnerable to Greens candidates in the inner city. Minns on Monday stressed he had “agonised” over the decision to intervene.

“The truth of the matter is there’s some people who say that the only thing to worry about is industry and jobs in all and every circumstance, and there are others who say you should only be worrying about the environment in any and all circumstances … we have to do both,” he said.

“We have to approach these things in a commonsense way and draw conclusions so that we’re making progress towards our climate goals, while at the same time not tipping hundreds and hundreds of families onto the scrap heap weeks before Christmas.”

Asked if his government would have made the same decision if an election was not looming, Minns said: “I believe we would have.”

“We’re a Labor government. We do need to protect jobs,” he said.

Environmental groups accused the government of interfering with independent planning rules. Lock the Gate’s national co-ordinator Georgina Woods labelled it “cynical and dangerous political interference in the planning system”, and accused Labor of “manufacturing a crisis to give special treatment to a coal company”.

She noted that under its existing licence, the mine already had approval to operate until 2032.

“There is no threat to jobs at Mount Pleasant, which already has approval to stay open for another six years,” she said.

Greens MP Sue Higginson called it “an incredible new low for the Minns Labor government”, accusing Labor of “bypassing the planning process and the law as laid down by the High Court of Australia”.

“One thing is clear, under Labor the coal mining giants are writing the laws, and they are laws that will cause significant unassessed climate pollution and hurt communities,” she said.

NSW Natural Resources Minister Courtney Houssos said the new legislation – which will be introduced during the next sitting fortnight – would include requirements to limit scope 3 emissions in line with the IPC’s recent Hunter Valley Operations mine approval. It means that, in effect, the company can only export coal to countries that are signatories to the Paris climate agreement.

But lawyers for the HVO mega-project – described as a “carbon bomb” by environmental campaigners due to the vast emissions it will unlock over its 19-year lifespan – are also bracing for a challenge to last month’s approval decision after the High Court ruling.

Minns denied the government was undermining rules around the independent assessment of mines, saying the impact of the High Court judgment on MACH Energy’s expansion would still need to be worked out in the lower courts. He called it a “partial approval to keep pace with the current workforce that’s on the ground in that community”.

“It’s a difficult decision to make,” he said. “In normal circumstances, you wouldn’t want to do it. You’d want the court to make the decision before any expansion or a decision from the company. But if we waited, then those jobs would be gone by Christmas.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.