Des Houghton: Ruling on Waratah coal mine reads like green manifesto

A Land Court ruling against Clive Palmer’s proposed Waratah coal mine proposal reads like a green manifesto, and will have major ramifications for Queensland, writes Des Houghton.

The 372-page decision to recommend against Clive Palmer’s Waratah coal mine, written by Land Court President Fleur Kingham, reads to me like a green manifesto.

And it is a compelling one. It tells me King Coal is dead, or soon will be.

The court signed the death warrant for Waratah and wrote the funeral dirge in a landmark judgment that will empower anti-coal activists.

It also invoked sections of Queensland’s new Human Rights Act that enshrines protections for indigenous Australians against projects that impinge on their cultural heritage.

Like the High Court Mabo decision, it is destined to change Queensland forever.

“Climate change was a key issue in this hearing,” Kingham wrote. The words “Paris Agreement” appear 77 times in her decision.

“The evidence is clear that, globally, we are struggling to achieve (the Paris agreement) goal.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer. File picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicki Connolly

The higher the temperature rises the greater the risk that the climate will move into a self-reinforcing cycle with feedback loops, exacerbating the climate changes.

“None of that is in dispute.’’

She added: “Wherever the coal is burnt the emissions will contribute to environmental harm, including in Queensland.”

She said the risks were “unacceptable”, “even taking into account the economic and social benefits of the project”.

Waratah said the mine would contribute $2.5 billion a year to the state’s economy and make no net difference to global carbon emissions.

Kingham disagreed: “Waratah says approving the mine will make no difference to total emissions, because it will displace other lower-quality coal with higher greenhouse gas emissions. I reject that submission.”

Kingham accepted evidence that the mine would accelerate global warming.

She went further, saying Palmer’s quest for environmental approvals and mining licences was incompatible with human rights.

She said the Land Court itself was subject to requirements of Queensland’s Human Rights Act.

The mine would contribute to climate change impacts that would limit the cultural rights of First Nations peoples, the rights of children, the right to property and to privacy and home the right to enjoy human rights equally.

“It is not my function to decide whether granting the applications would be unlawful because it is not compatible with human rights,” Kingham said.

Bimblebox Nature Refuge was established by individuals committed to conservation.

However, she said she was obliged to consider the human rights implications. And she sure did.

The case against Waratah was brought by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of activist group Youth Verdict and The Bimblebox Alliance.

Waratah would have been the biggest thermal coal mine in the country, and still could be if Palmer wins an appeal.

He plans open cut and underground digs above and below several properties in central Queensland.

Most have been extensively cleared for grazing, the court heard. The remaining property, Glen Innes, is a protected area under the Nature Conservation Act and is known as the Bimblebox Nature Refuge.

The court heard Bimblebox was established by a group of private citizens, mostly indigenous, who are committed to conservation and to exploring whether sustainable cattle grazing can coexist with biodiversity conservation.

Said Kingham: “These citizens pooled their limited personal savings and secured Commonwealth government funding to purchase the property as part of the national estate.

“Funding was conditional on the property being declared a refuge under Queensland law, which it was. Both the Commonwealth and Queensland governments assessed the property as worthy of protection because of its ecological values.”

Waratah proposed to dig under two-thirds of Bimblebox.

“That would cause subsidence across the surface of the land above the mine, resulting in a ridge and swale landscape and extensive surface cracking. The extent of subsidence impacts is not certain,” she said.

Bimblebox could be “seriously and possibly irreversibly damaged’’ by a mine.

She added: “I have found that several human rights would be limited by the project.”

Jiritju Fourmile welcomes the Honourable Fleur Kingham, president of the Land Court of Queensland, to his country during a traditional smoking ceremony. Photo: Isaac McCarthy.

Kingham was sympathetic to evidence given by Professor Rod Fensham from the University of Queensland’s school of biological sciences and principal botanist at the Queensland Herbarium.

She published the concerns of other scientists.

“They agree the environmental impacts will include increased temperature, worsening drought conditions, and prolonged droughts, longer, more frequent and more intense heatwaves, increases in extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in the intensity and frequency of bushfire events, more intense rainfall events and storm surges, increases in mosquito populations and vector-borne diseases, increased intensity of extreme rainfall, greater proportion of high intensity storms, erosion and loss of productive topsoil, desertification, mass coral bleachings, increased ocean acidity, sea level rise, decline in ecosystems and habitats, decline in terrestrial and marine species populations, and increased rates of species extinction.’’

Phew.

And Kingham didn’t stop there, warning of other threats to humankind from rising sea levels and larger and more frequent bushfires.

The judgment was delivered about the same time as it was revealed that many of our coal mines still have years to run. But they are on borrowed time.

The mines will eventually shut, and many regional towns will die.

It is not so well known that mining companies pay huge rates that keep many regional town councils afloat.

Without coal mines, the rate base would shrink and there would be no money to fix the potholes or repair streetlights.

Darkness may descend.

The Land Court may go down as the institution which turned out the lights.

Des Houghton is a media consultant and a former editor of The Courier-Mail, The Sunday Mail. The Sunday Sun and the Gold Coast Sun