Australia's High Court has sided with community members in the Hunter Valley to strike down a state regulator's approval of the Mount Pleasant coalmine expansion, which could have kept the operation running until 2048. The Guardian described the outcome as likely to prove a historic victory, with the central implication potentially affecting other fossil fuel expansions.
The ruling lands as Anthony Albanese wraps up a trip to Fiji and Tuvalu ahead of the Cop31 summit in Turkey next month. The prime minister helped lead a delegation of about 50 dignitaries to Tuvalu, described as the least visited country on the planet, with land totalling just 26 sq km, mostly narrow strips less than 2 metres above sea level. Nasa researchers say the rate of sea level rise around Tuvalu is about twice the global average. The delegation was shown a land reclamation project on the main atoll of Funafuti, mostly funded by the Australian government, which is dredging sand and gravel from the lagoon to create more than 20 hectares of new, higher ground.
Albanese's message in the Pacific is difficult to square with his position on the mine case. Speaking on 2HD radio in Newcastle in May, he said the renewable transition was needed but that the government supported 'existing industries', that is, coal, and that he hoped the community group would lose because the expansion had 'been through appropriate approvals'. Critics were quick to note the contrast between those remarks and the language he has used over the past three days in Fiji, where the Guardian says he sees 'the very definition of climate injustice'.
The extent to which the judgment constrains future fossil fuel approvals remains unresolved, but the decision marks one of the most significant Australian legal outcomes on climate this year.