MPs plead for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to back mine extension

Federal Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon has pleaded with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to approve expansion of the New Acland mine.

Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon. Picture: Gary Ramage

Federal Labor MP Joel Fitz­gibbon has pleaded with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to approve expansion of the New Acland mine, where 120 workers were told last week they would soon be sacked without ­access to new coal reserves.

The Australian-listed company New Hope, owners of the decades-old open-cut mine near Oakey, west of Brisbane, on Monday gave notice to the Australian Stock Exchange that it would stop production in October or November unless there was approval to the expansion.

An application for the expansion was first made almost 13 years ago, and has faced a series of legal challenges launched by an alliance of environmental groups and some local farmers.

Since 2019, the workforce has been cut from 320 to 120 at the mine, with a further 90 office workers also losing jobs.

There are also fears that rail worker jobs could be lost, with the mine spending $40 million a year on moving its coal to the Brisbane Port.

Ms Palaszczuk reneged on a previous commitment to make a decision on the expansion after the outcome of a legal challenge several years ago, which approved it but was later appealed.

She now says she will wait for all legal action to finish.

A High Court decision in February sent the approvals process back to the Land Court for a third time, but that hearing won’t go ahead until November when New Acland’s coal supplies will have run out.

Mr Fitzgibbon, the federal MP for the coal-rich NSW seat of Hunter, has accused Labor of turning its back on coal workers and called on the Palaszczuk government to approve the expansion of the mine.

“It’s hardly surprising I won’t agree with the Palaszczuk government on everything but I think this is a tragic outcome,’’ he said.

“She (Ms Palaszczuk) should do all she can to save the mine, its workforce and the regional economy.’’

Federal Labor MP Shayne Neumann, the only regional Labor MP in Queensland, said “I am very sad for the workers’’.

“The project has gone through years and years and years of litigation and the workers had hoped to have their jobs secure.

“It is a project that would contribute to not just jobs but economic activity and the overall development of southeast Queensland.’’

Last year, Ms Palaszczuk approved the Olive Downs coking coalmine in north Queensland shortly before the 2020 election, despite it also facing a legal action in the form of a judicial review.

At a parliamentary committee hearing this year, the director-general of the state Department of Resources, Mike Kaiser, said the differing treatment was based on government policy.

“In terms of Acland, you’d be aware that’s a policy decision, in a sense not for us to answer,” he said in response to a question by Toowoomba North Liberal Nat­ionals MP Trevor Watts.

“The government has decided to allow the legal processes to play out in that process.”