Zero tolerance: Plibersek cancels stalled coal mines for green reasons

Federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek has killed two Queensland coal mine proposals that were already effectively dead.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has killed two Queensland coalmine proposals that were already effectively dead. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has killed two Queensland coalmine proposals that were already effectively dead.

Ms Plibersek announced on Friday that she had cancelled MacMines Austasia’s China Stone coalmine application – to be built next to Bravus’s Carmichael coalmine in the Galilee Basin – and Stanmore Coal’s The Range mine application, in southern-central Queensland.

She said she would not put up with companies that refused to supply the federal government with necessary environmental information, after the two mining applications had lapsed for years.

“If companies aren’t willing to show how they will protect ­nature, then I’m willing to cancel their projects – and that’s exactly what I’ve done,” Ms Plibersek said.

MacMines’ China Stone project, the parent company of which is based in China, was spruiked as one of five possible coalmines in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, and was to produce 38 million tonnes of thermal coal each year, using both open-cut and underground mining techniques.

Queensland’s co-ordinator-general gave the mine application conditional approval in 2018, and the then-federal government asked for more information about the potential impact on water and threatened species, but the company did not respond.

It withdrew its mining lease applications to the Queensland government in 2019 and the environmental impact statement ­approval lapsed last November. MacMines’ Australian phone has been disconnected.

Stanmore Coal’s project was effectively shelved after it received a feasibility study that showed forecast operating costs would be too expensive. It was also hamstrung by a lack of capacity to transport the coal to export.

Last year, Stanmore bought BHP’s lucrative BMA coal assets, and appears to have redirected its attention to those ­operations.

The federal government ­requested more information from Stanmore about The Range in 2013, but it was not provided.

Stanmore CEO Marcelo Matos acknowledged the company had been focused on other mining operations rather than The Range, which he described as a “legacy” thermal coal resource. But Mr Matos said the company reserved the right to ­resubmit the project for consideration.

Last year, Ms Plibersek rejected Clive Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal Project, becoming the first environment minister to reject a coalmine.

Opposition environment spokesman Jonno Duniam said work on the projects had largely stalled years ago, so Ms Plibersek’s decisions were not surprising, and accused the minister of “gleefully” rejecting the coalmines.