NSW Labor overrides High Court to legislate 32% coal expansion at Mount Pleasant, entrenching fossil fuel dependence on Gomeroi Country
Original framing: “Minns accused of bypassing high court ruling with laws to allow NSW mine to increase coal production by 32%” — The Guardian - World
Gomeroi people have never ceded sovereignty over the lands and waters encompassing Mount Pleasant. Their 2022 Federal Court native title claim explicitly opposes the mine's expansion, citing destruction of sacred sites, songlines, and the Namoi River's cultural health. The legislation bypasses the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (NSW) consultation requirements, replicating the terra nullius logic that treats Country as empty resource stock. Gomeroi elders' submission to the IPC detailed how mining fractures the spiritual connectivity between water, land, and ancestors — a harm no monetary compensation can remedy.
The Mount Pleasant bill is not an anomaly but the latest iteration of Australia's 'carbon colonialism' — a legal-financial architecture where parliament, courts, and planning bodies rotate in service of extractive capital.
The High Court's ruling briefly interrupted this circuit; the legislation restores it. Gomeroi sovereignty, climate science, and intergenerational equity are not 'considerations' to be balanced against jobs; they are the structural conditions for any livable future. The solution pathways converge on one necessity: dismantling the legislative capture that lets a premier override a court for a donor. Until FPIC is law, carbon budgets are binding, and transition is funded, every 'climate emergency' declaration is the trickster's grin — Folly wearing the crown.