The Minns government will intervene to give a Hunter Valley coal mine a licence to dig up millions of tonnes more each year despite a seismic High Court ruling that found its approval was invalid because it had failed to reckon with emissions from Australian coal burnt overseas.
Premier Chris Minns announced on Monday that the NSW government would step in to give MACH Energy legislated approval to increase production at the Mount Pleasant coal mine to 16.5 million tonnes a year, from its current limit of 12.5 million tonnes, until 2032.
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 the workers before Christmas. That was because it had scaled up its workforce to prepare for the increase in its production limit to 21 million tonnes a year as approved by the IPC.
“These are not easy decisions,” Minns said. “They’re incredibly difficult, and I’ve agonised over this one.
“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.
“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.”
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.
The decision prompted immediate backlash from environmental groups, which accused the government of interfering with independent planning rules. Greens MP Sue Higginson said Labor had capitulated to “threats and taken the side of the billionaire coal company over the community”.
“This is an incredible new low for the Minns Labor government, bypassing the planning process and the law as laid down by the High Court of Australia,” she said.
“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.”
Lock the Gate national co-ordinator Georgina Woods called it “cynical and dangerous political interference in the planning system”, accusing Labor of “manufacturing a crisis to give special treatment to a coal company”.
“There is no threat to jobs at Mount Pleasant, which already has approval to stay open for another six years,” she said.
Labor is facing significant pressure from One Nation in the Hunter Valley. Asked if his government would have made the same decision if an election was not looming, Minns said: “I believe we would have.
“What I would say in relation to that very fair question is: Look at the government’s record over the last six months,” he said, referring to a series of manufacturing announcements in the Hunter valley and the Tomago Aluminium bailout.
“We’re a Labor government. We do need to protect jobs.”
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.”
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