The proposal of a company owned by Clive Palmer to dig Australia’s largest thermal coalmine in central Queensland is “an attempt at financial gain” that comes with “an obscenely high cost” for future generations, a group challenging the mine’s approval in a landmark climate and human rights challenge has told court.
The case, which began in the Queensland land court on Tuesday, has been brought by a group of young people, Youth Verdict, and is led by its First Nations members.
The group argues that the Galilee Coal Project proposed by Palmer’s company, Waratah Coal, would cause environmental harm by contributing to global climate change, and in the process limit the cultural rights of First Nations Queenslanders to maintain their distinctive relationships with the land, the court heard.
As part of the case, the court will later travel to the Torres Strait to consider the first-hand impacts of climate change. It is the first time the Queensland Human Rights Act, adopted in 2019, has been considered in relation to the impact of a resources project.
The Galilee Coal project – formerly called China First – has not progressed since it gained federal environmental approval in late 2013. The proposed mine is about 100km from Adani’s Carmichael project and would require much of its own supporting infrastructure.
Waratah Coal plans to build two open-cut pits, four underground mines – removing 40m tonnes a year – and a 453km railway linking the project to the Adani-owned Abbot Point coal terminal near Bowen.
The barrister acting for Youth Verdict, Saul Holt QC, said in his opening statement that Waratah Coal was ultimately controlled by a single person and that the proponent had shown it was “prepared to stop and start based on economics”.
“The attempt by the proponent at financial gain on the collapsing coal market is not cost free,” Holt said.
“It comes at an obscenely high cost and most of that cost will be borne by future generations.”
In a brief opening statement, Peter Ambrose QC, acting for Waratah Coal, said “climate change is real” but that the coal at the site was “high-energy producing” and would ultimately result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
“If the … coal is not brought to market, coal from other sources will supply the market, however long the market exists,” Ambrose told the court.
Holt told the court that in Waratah Coal’s own environmental impact statement from more than a decade ago, the company argued the need for the project was based on the “demand for the coal resource.”
He said the argument that total global carbon emissions would not be increased by the mine was “false logic”.
“The climate scientists have identified possible future scenarios in which humanity ceases burning coal … those scenarios can exist without this coalmine, but they cannot exist with it,” Holt said.
“The climate change experts agree … that every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is material, given the state we are in. This mine will contribute more than 2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide [and would be] easily the biggest thermal coalmine operating in Australia, four times the size of Adani’s.
“The only way to achieve less than 2C of warming is … if 95% of Australian coal reserves stay in the ground.”
He also questioned Waratah’s “assumptions about coal quality, coal quantity, cost and price, which are unclear and inconsistent”.
