A Clive Palmer-owned mining company has withdrawn its appeal against a landmark ruling that its giant thermal coalmine project would worsen the climate crisis and infringe on the human rights of future generations.
Lawyers for Waratah Coal have told Queensland’s supreme court it was discontinuing its appeal against the state’s land court decision in a case brought by First Nations young women and environmentalists.
The company’s Galilee Coal project, in the Galilee Basin, wants to mine 4om tonnes of coal a year, making it Australia’s biggest thermal coalmine.
But in November the president of the Queensland land court, Fleur Kingham, said the emissions from the burning of the coal would, through its effects on global heating, limit the human and cultural rights of First Nations people and young Queenslanders.
Lawyers for Waratah Coal went to the state’s supreme court in December to challenge the decision, but withdrew the appeal on Friday.
The land court’s decision will now have to be considered by the government, which must approve or refuse an environmental authority for the mine and a mining lease.
A spokesperson for Palmer would not comment on the decision to withdraw the appeal or on the future of the project, saying only: “That’s a secret. You will have to wait and see what the next play is”.
The export-focussed Galilee Coal proposal is one of a number of projects over the last decade to have designs on the vast coal resource of the Galilee basin. So far only one, Adani’s Carmichael mine, has gone ahead.
Murrawah Johnson, a co-director at Youth Verdict that brought the case for young First Nations people, said the case “allows more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to object to climate-destroying fossil fuel projects proposed throughout Queensland in defence of First Nations cultures and our collective future”.
She said: “We now call on the Queensland government to reject Clive Palmer’s Waratah mining lease and environmental approval applications.”
Sharyn Munro, of the Bimblebox Alliance, which also brought the case, said the court’s refusal “has dethroned king coal, removing its previously unreasonable rights over all else”.
She also paid tribute to the late climate scientist Prof Will Steffen who died last month after giving expert evidence in the case.
Alison Rose, a senior solicitor at the Environmental Defenders Office, said it was significant that Kingham’s decision now stands.
“This mine would have destroyed the Bimblebox Nature Refuge and added 1.5bn tonnes of climate pollution to the atmosphere, undermining hopes of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees,” she said.
“This case marks a line in the sand and sends a very clear message – continued development of coal in 2023 is incompatible with our human rights.”
