A court has recommended the Queensland government reject a controversial coalmine in what farmers and lawyers hailed as a historic victory in one of Australia’s largest environmental public interest cases.
The saga of the $900m New Acland mine proposal, which included a public slanging match between the broadcaster Alan Jones and Campbell Newman that led to a defamation suit by the former premier, drew to an extraordinary conclusion with a ruling by a land court member, Paul Smith, on Wednesday.
In what is believed to be the court’s first outright ruling against a major mine in its modern history, Smith recommended that the government refuse environmental and mining licences to its proponent, New Hope Coal.
It was a David and Goliath victory for landholders who put forward evidence of the miner’s faulty modelling of jobs and groundwater impacts, serious noise and dust impacts, and a history of local complaints.
Newman’s Liberal National party government was mired in controversy over its belated approval of the mine expansion, on Queensland’s Darling Downs, after New Hope’s parent company donations of about $900,000 to the federal Liberal party.
Paul King, of Oakey Coal Action Alliance, a group of more than 60 farmers and objectors to the mine, said: “We suggested during the court proceedings that that donation was an attempt to influence the decision-making process.”
King said: “This decision, which clearly demonstrates no good reason for the mine to go ahead, is a vindication of a clean system.
“This shows that our system is robust.”
Jo-Anne Bragg, the chief executive of the environmental defenders office, which acted for the objectors, said it was “unprecedented in decades” for a Queensland court to recommend a flat rejection of a major mine.
“I think it is a watershed because it is so rare a group of landholders and locals can win against a big, well-resourced mining company,” she said.
Bragg said the EDO expected the state resources minister, Anthony Lynham, and the environment department to follow the court’s recommendation after a “very thorough” 96-day trial and 459-page decision.
The case saw New Hope cut its original job projections from an average of 2,953 a year to 680 net jobs nationally, when other industries displaced by the mine were taken into account.
Landholders mustered evidence that unreliable groundwater modelling by the miner put farmers’ groundwater at risk. They also argued that more than 100 local complaints to New Hope and 30 to state environmental officials about coal dust and noise levels had effectively fallen on deaf ears for a decade.
This was the basis of evidence of a high risk of the new mine exceeding air-quality limits.
ORDER/S:
1. I recommend to the Honourable the Minister responsible for the MRA that MLA 50232 be rejected.
2. In light of Order 1, I recommend to the Honourable the Minister responsible for the MRA that MLA 700002 be rejected.
3. I recommend to the administering authority responsible for the EPA that Draft EA Number EPML 00335713 be refused.
4. I direct the Registrar of the Land Court provide a copy of these reasons and access to the Land Court e- trial site to the Honourable the Minister administering the Mineral Resources Act 1989 and to the administering authority under the Environmental Protection Act 1994.
5. I will hear from the parties as to costs.
