Premier Chris Minns announced on Monday that the NSW government would step in to give MACH Energy legislated approval to increase production at the Mount Pleasant coal mine to 16.5 million tonnes a year, from its current limit of 12.5 million tonnes, until 2032. The decision came after MACH Energy told the government it was preparing to sack half its workforce – about 400 people – before Christmas if its approval was not expanded.
In return for boosting the mine's annual production limit, the government said the company had agreed to sign a jobs guarantee that would establish a legal obligation to maintain staffing levels.
The intervention follows a High Court ruling a fortnight ago that a 2022 approval by the NSW Independent Planning Commission was invalid because it had failed to properly consider the climate impact of coal exported overseas from the mine. The ruling – which found the IPC had not properly considered the impact of so-called "scope 3 emissions" – led to immediate calls from the Coalition and One Nation for Labor to urgently pass new laws overruling the High Court.
Speaking on Monday, Minns acknowledged the difficulty of the decision. "These are not easy decisions," he said. "They're incredibly difficult, and I've agonised over this one." He said the government had to balance climate goals against protecting jobs: "We have to approach these things in a commonsense way and draw conclusions so that we're making progress towards our climate goals, while at the same time not tipping hundreds and hundreds of families onto the scrap heap weeks before Christmas."
NSW Natural Resources Minister Courtney Houssos said the new legislation would include requirements to limit scope 3 emissions in line with the IPC's recent Hunter Valley Operations mine approval. In effect, the company can only export coal to countries that are signatories to the Paris climate agreement.
The decision sparked immediate backlash from environmental groups. Greens MP Sue Higginson said Labor had capitulated to "threats and taken the side of the billionaire coal company over the community". "This is an incredible new low for the Minns Labor government, bypassing the planning process and the law as laid down by the High Court of Australia," she said.
Lock the Gate national co-ordinator Georgina Woods called it "cynical and dangerous political interference in the planning system", accusing Labor of "manufacturing a crisis to give special treatment to a coal company". She noted that the mine already had approval to stay open for another six years, arguing there was no threat to jobs.
Minns denied the government was undermining independent planning rules, saying the impact of the High Court judgment on MACH Energy's expansion would still need to be worked out in the lower courts. He described the move as a "partial approval to keep pace with the current workforce that's on the ground in that community". Asked if the government would have made the same decision if an election was not looming, Minns said he believed it would have, pointing to the government's record on protecting jobs in the Hunter Valley.