Union heaps further New Acland coalmine pressure on Annastacia Palaszczuk

The Australian Workers Union has called on Queensland’s Labor government to green-light the New Acland coalmine expansion.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Paul Beutel

The Australian Workers Union has called on Queensland’s Labor government to green-light the New Acland coalmine expansion, stepping up pressure from the Labor Right for the project to ­proceed.

AWU state secretary Steve Baker said the government should approve the $900m redevelopment, even though mine opponents have gone to the High Court to restart the clock on the 13-year process.

“Approving this mine now will inject much-needed funds into the Queensland economy and deliver real benefits for local workers and their families,” he said.

“We respect there are processes that need to be followed, but given the years of delays and the challenges we’re facing right now, we think it’s well and truly time to push ahead with this.

“We need to be doing everything we can to support local jobs and industry in Queensland.”

Mine owner the New Hope Group has blamed the delay for the retrenchment of more than 170 staff and says further job losses will happen unless the stage-three project is approved by the state.

However, Queensland Natural Resources, Mines and Energy Minister Anthony Lynham said the government was bound by a 2017 election commitment to allow the legal process to play out.

Three federal Labor parliamentarians from the party’s right wing, agriculture and resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon, veterans’ affairs and defence personnel spokesman Shayne Neumann and senator Anthony Chisholm, a former ALP state secretary in Queensland, have pushed publicly for the state government to change its position.

Mr Fitzgibbon has said the risk lay with the company, not the state, if the mine expansion on the Darling Downs west of Brisbane was to proceed before the High Court ruled on the appeal by the Oakey Coal Action Alliance, a group of local farmers and ­environmentalists.

The intervention of the state branch of the AWU is important because it is the faction of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

She presides over a government in which the Left’s dominance of caucus and cabinet has given rise to claims that it is hostile to expanded coalmining.

New Hope has warned that the depletion of the existing mine means the operation was not ­viable unless an adjoining ore body was opened up.

The company believed it had cleared the last hurdle last year when the Queensland Court of Appeal ­delivered judgment and orders in its favour after prolonged litigation in the Land Court and the Supreme Court.

If the Oakey Coal Action Alliance succeeds in the High Court, the development application will be referred to the Queensland Land Court to be heard again.

Mr Baker said: “The AWU has always supported good, local job creating projects and the New Acland stage-three expansion is no exception.”