Although the Queensland government has granted Adani three coal licences to mine an estimated 11 billion tonnes of thermal coal in the Carmichael area, the company still faces several hurdles before it will be able to commence mining in the region.
Queensland’s Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Dr Anthony Lynham, on Sunday approved the licences for Adani for the $16 billion Carmichael coal mine and rail project, claiming the government had put in place stringent conditions on environmental protection and landholders’ rights. Lynham said in a statement:
“The mine’s environmental authority had about 140 conditions to protect local flora and fauna, groundwater and surface water resources, as well as controls on dust and noise. A further 99 stringent and wide-ranging conditions apply to the rail and port elements of the project.”
The project will still need more approvals before it can get the go-ahead, including secondary approvals for rail, port facilities, power, water, roadworks and an airport. Adani still faces two legal challenges to the project.
The first is a native title case being brought against Adani by the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) people. The National Native Title Tribunal in April 2015 determined that the mine could go ahead, but this is now the subject of an appeal in the Federal Court. A traditional owner and spokesperson for the people, Adrian Burragubba, said in a statement yesterday that the Queensland government’s decision to proceed despite the case being unresolved was “a disgraceful new low in the exercise of government power at the expense of traditional owners’ rights”. He said Lynham in October had sent a letter to W&J’s legal counsel stating he would wait for the matter to be resolved before making a decision on whether to grant the licences. Burragubba said the case could go all the way to the High Court:
“The minister may think this is the end of the matter, but for us it is just another chapter in the long struggle we have to get proper respect and protection for our rights under law, and ensure our sacred homelands are preserved for time immemorial. We have said no to the Adani Carmichael mine. And when we say no, we mean no.”
The second case, launched by the Australian Conservation Foundation in November last year after the federal government approved the project, challenges the mine on the grounds that the estimated 4.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted by the mine during its lifetime would have a huge impact on the Great Barrier Reef. ACF boss Kelly O’Shanassy told Crikey in November: “It will produce an enormous amount of pollution, and that pollution will make climate change worse, and climate change will affect the reef. We feel [Hunt] has not adequately looked at his World Heritage obligations to protect the Great Barrier Reef, and he has those obligations under environmental law. That’s what we’re testing.”
ACF spokesperson Josh Meadows told Crikey that like W&J, the ACF was surprised the Queensland government had approved the mine while litigation was ongoing: “We were surprised because Minister Lynham said in February that he was reluctant to go ahead with the mining lease while there was still judicial reviews outstanding.”
The Coordinator-General’s report into the environmental impact of the mine in 2014 argued that because the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area is 320 km upstream from the project, it was unlikely to have “any direct impacts” on the reef, but the report admitted polluted water from the mine could end up in the reef. But Meadows says the ACF’s case is arguing that the impact the project will have on climate change will damage the Great Barrier Reef further.
“We’re seeing at the moment with the coral bleaching that is occurring on the reef, just how even small increases in temperature can have a devastating impact on coral,” Meadows said.
The ACF’s case is due to be heard in the Federal Court on May 3 and 4. The native title case was heard in February, but a judgment has not yet been released.
The ACF believes that if Parliament passes changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the ACF would still have standing as an environmental group under common law, but challenges to ministerial approval of projects would be tougher. The legislation to stop so-called “green lawfare” was introduced during the Abbott era, but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is still planning on forging ahead with the legislation. It is still before the Senate, however, and there has been no indication from the government on when it plans to bring on the bill for a vote.
The other major hurdle facing Adani in getting the Carmichael mine project up and running is securing funding for the project. The Commonwealth Bank, NAB and ANZ have reportedly refused to fund it, while Westpac is also said to be hesitant to back the project.
9 thoughts on “Adani coal mine still faces two big legal hurdles”
Wayne Robinson
April 4, 2016 at 1:21 pmThe Queensland government has ‘imposed stringent conditions on environmental protection?’
Burnt, the 11 billion tonnes of coal will add the equivalent of more CO2 than the world adds to the atmosphere in a year.
The best environmental protection would be to leave the coal in the ground.
Dog's Breakfast
April 4, 2016 at 2:47 pmUnbelievable!
Up is down, left is right, climate change is a hoax, and the Adani coal mine will get up and make lots of money and provide lots of jobs and they will fill in the hole in the ground and fix all the mess and the reef will be saved.
And words mean exactly what I want them to mean at any given time, nothing more and nothing less.
Bizarro world!
paddy
April 4, 2016 at 3:13 pmWith the lack of bank funding such an obvious lifeline to “get out of jail” for the Qld Govt, it’s a remarkable demonstration of raw, political cowardice, that they haven’t seized the moment to finally ditch this horrid turkey.
I wonder just how much it will cost them in political capital by the time the whole sorry mess comes to a crashing close?
Jaybuoy
April 4, 2016 at 3:16 pmIt’s a crime against the future..this type of cavalier behaviour can only lead to disaster..it gives a new meaning to the term Indian summer..
zut alors
April 4, 2016 at 3:42 pmJOBS! The four letter word which justifies pretty much anything to short-sighted politicians.
Once the reef is screwed it will impact on Queensland’s tourist dollar – hence, looking at the scenario from a purely monetary angle, it would be unwise to proceed with the Carmichael mine. Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery’s disgraceful environmental legacy should be fresh in our minds, the risks are too high to repeat another major contamination with Adani.
Sir David Attenborough’s series on the Barrier Reef begins this Sunday on ABC TV, let’s hope it stirs more public disquiet & opposition to Adani’s project.
leone
April 4, 2016 at 3:59 pmIt would be nice if everyone stopped jumping up and down and yelling and sat down and actually looked at a few facts.
This scheme is never going to happen. It is a dead duck.
Adani can’t get funding, the longer the disputes go on the more unviable the mine becomes. Coal mines are closing, not opening. Coal is not worth digging out of the ground now and India, the supposed big market for the Carmichael coal, is going solar. They don’t need or want our coal.
I have the feeling the Queensland government approved the leases to avoid allegations of being anti-employment, fully aware the mining will never start.
Hugh (Charlie) McColl
April 4, 2016 at 4:35 pmLeone, clearly you don’t live in the midst of this uncertainty. Townsville is gripped by uncertainty as returning (unemployed) FIFO workers from coal, gold, zinc and copper mines join the ranks of QNI refinery’s 800+ sacked employees and cast about looking for the next job opportunity other than mowing lawns and raking leaves. They are led to believe that something will happen in the Galilee Basin (and on the associated rail, port and construction projects) and are seriously galvanising the attention of state and federal politicians who, under no circumstances can be seen to say no. Don’t bet that “Adani can’t get funding”. Clive Palmer gets funding. LNG projects at Gladstone got about $80 BILLION funding, RAAF fighters and Navy submarines get funding – nothing is off the table in this 21st century government era except tax rises.
AR
April 4, 2016 at 7:55 pmEnvironment be buggered – the only thing that will stop this rapine is MONEY, the lack thereof.
Coal is a dead dinosaur, its boosters just too blinkered to see that.
GideonPolya
April 6, 2016 at 10:47 amMissing from Mainstream discussion in pro-coal Murdochracy Australia is the horrendous reality that pollutants from the burning of Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal exports will KILL over 13,000 people each year. Carbon fuel burning pollutants kill 7 million people each year (WHO), this including 75,000 dying from pollutant from the burning of exported Australian coal and 10,000 Australians dying from pollutants from carbon fuel burning . Despite this, the pro-coal Turnbull KOALition Government and the Palaszczuk Queensland Labor Government have approved the Adani Carmichael mine in disgraceful and unforgivable decisions that are made more awful in the ecocidal and speciescidal context of the worst Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching and die-off due to global warming plus El Nino.
The pro-coal, speciescidal, ecocidal, anti-science, terracidal and climate criminal KOALition Government under the oh-so-charming but Abbott-lite, Abbott-in-sheep’s-clothing, lipstick-on-a-pig Malcolm Turnbull (aka Malcolm Turncoat, Tony Turnbull, Malcolm Abbott) ) has approved the Carmichael Project of the Indian Adani Company in Queensland’s Galilee Basin that is set to be the world’s largest coal mine. This flies in the face of science that says stop new coal mines and rapidly close down existing ones. Pollutants from the burning of predicted Carmichael coal exports will ultimately kill 13,400 people each year and kill over 0.5 million people in the life of the project . Burning of world-leading Australian coal exports ultimately kills 75,000 people each year. About 7 million people worldwide including about 10,000 Australians die each year from carbon fuel burning pollutants – by way of comparison the barbarous ISIS and the even more barbarous, Australia-backed US Alliance have “only” managed to kill 12,000 Iraqis annually in the post-2011 Iraqi civil war (for details of calculations see “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths ).
The annual income in USD from Carmichael coal of $3.8 billion from $63 /t coal applied to 60 Mt Coal exported annually (most of which may vanish overseas and will be tax minimized) will be hugely exceeded: (a) by a factor of about 10 times by the resultant $34.8 billion Carbon Debt from applying an expertly-determined $200/t CO2 damage-related Carbon Price to the 174 Mt CO2 estimated from 2.9 t CO2/t coal from burning the annually exported 60 Mt thermal coal, and (b) by a factor of about 25 times by the $94 billion hidden mortality-related cost from applying the $7 million per person risk-avoidance–based Valued Of a Statistical Life (VOSL) to the 13,400 annual deaths from pollutants deriving from the burning of the annual export of 60 Mt thermal coal from the Carmichael mine (see Gideon Polya, “Coalition Climate Crimes & 200 Reasons Why Australia Must Dump Pro-coal, Pro-war Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull”, Countercurrents, 1 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya011115.htm ).
Decent Australians who care for fellow Australians, their children and future generations will utterly reject the pro-coal, Australian-killing KOALition and Labor Right climate criminals, state terrorists, carbon terrorists and climate terrorists and will vote 1 Green and put the KOALition last (there are a few pro-environment Labor Left MPs).