NEW ACLAND MINE DECISION A VICTORY FOR COMMON SENSE
- Environmental Defenders Office-backed group calls off anti-coal legal action.
- New Acland can now progress with providing good-paying regional jobs and supplying taxes and royalties that benefit all Australians.
- A Liberal National Coalition Government will defund the EDO and halve approval times for new coal and gas operations.
Shadow Minister for Resources, Senator Susan McDonald has praised coal miner New Hope for weathering a now-abandoned legal storm brought on by the taxpayer-funded Environmental Defenders Office.
Senator McDonald said the New Acland coal mine near Oakey in southern Queensland had passed numerous environmental checks and endured a decade of delays as New Hope tried to expand operations.
âThe Albanese Labor Government has created toxic conditions for mining investment in this country with lengthy delays for approvals, anti-mining language and providing taxpayer funding to the EDO which emboldens activists to disrupt mining operations that have already passed some of the worldâs most stringent environmental and regulatory processes,â she said.
âWe should be supplying the world with our high-calorific, efficient coal but miners are being discouraged by Laborâs industrial relations, environmental and taxation laws.
âA Liberal National Coalition Government will halve approval times for new coal and gas ventures and we will defund the EDO.
âCoal and gas extraction benefits all Australians through royalties and taxes, and provides stable, good-paying jobs for thousands of people.
âAustralia cannot afford another three years of a government that is strangling our most valuable industry.â
ENDS