Coalition will take six to eight weeks to revise its Carmichael coalmine approval

The federal government has said it will take six to eight weeks to reconsider its approval of Queensland’s Carmichael coalmine after the federal court halted what would be Australia’s largest mine. The court ruled that the approval of Adani’s Carmichael mine was invalid because the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, had not fully assessed its impact on two vulnerable species: the yakka skink and the ornamental snake. Hunt’s department said the court’s decision was a “technical, administrative matter” and that the original approval would be reconsidered to remove any doubt over its validity. “Reconsidering the decision does not require revisiting the entire approval process,” the environment department said. “Without pre-empting a final decision about the project, the department expects that it will take six to eight weeks to prepare its advice and the supporting documentation, and for the minister to reconsider his final decision.” The environment department said Hunt had considered advice given to him at all points in the approval process. Hunt approved the $16bn mining project, slated for Queensland’s Galilee basin, in July 2014. The project would involve removing up to 60m tonnes of coal a year, to be transferred on a new rail line to a redeveloped port at Abbot Point for overseas shipment. Adani, which has yet to secure sufficient financial backing for the Carmichael mine and has faced fierce opposition from green groups, said the federal court ruling was based upon a “technicality”. “It is regrettable that a technical legal error from the federal environment department has exposed the approval to an adverse decision,” a company spokesman said. “It should be noted the approval did include appropriate conditions to manage the species protection of the yakka skink and ornamental snake.” Adani estimates the 60-year project would create 10,000 jobs and generate $22bn in taxes and royalties, although these figures have been questioned. The Queensland Greens senator Larissa Waters said it was a “wonderful outcome that showed our environment minister just can’t ignore our environmental laws and has to actually apply them properly”. “And it’s taken a community group to stand up to the might of the government and this multinational coal company and point out that environmental laws count and need to be complied with,” she said. Waters said Adani now had “a huge opportunity … to walk away from this disastrous proposal that Queenslanders don’t support”. “We know this would be one of the biggest coalmines in the southern hemisphere, it would be a huge disaster for the Great Barrier Reef with extra dredging, the expansion of ports, extra ships heading through the reef,” she said. “And of course, when that coal is burnt, worsening the reef’s future and all of our collective climate.” The Queensland Resources Council said it was “preposterous” that the project’s approval had been set aside. The Queensland state government also called for the mine to go ahead. Queensland’s mining minister, Anthony Lynham, said he was “very disappointed” at the court’s decision and called on Hunt to “sort this out as quickly as possible”. But environment groups have refused to accept that their victory will be temporary. “I’m sure the company will say this is a technicality, but to describe an endangered species as a technicality and groundwater as a technicality is in line with Adani’s environmental record around the world, which is appalling,” said Geoff Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. “The government should simply strike this project down. At a time when Barack Obama is looking to close down the worst-polluting mines in the US, we have a federal government actively promoting and subsidising new coalmines. We are just so out of step.” Cousins, who has been lobbying potential investors to reject the project, said the government should do more to move Australia towards clean energy. Michael Roche, the chief executive of the Queensland resources council, said it was a “very dark day for all those who were counting on the swift go-ahead to the Galilee basin projects, in particular Carmichael”. “The clock is ticking on this project, [Adani] have been at it for nearly five years. There is not unending patience for projects like this and New Delhi is watching very closely what’s happening in Australia,” he said. Roche said Indian observers “don’t like what they’re seeing” in the months after the Australian and Queensland governments “rolled out the red carpet” for the pan-Indian delegation including the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and Adani’s chief promoter, Gautam Adani, at the G20 in Brisbane in November 2014. “Since then all this great Indian company has seen is layer upon layer of red tape, the red carpet long forgotten,” he said. Roche said opening the Galilee hinged on the success of a “first mover” such as Adani, without which crucial rail and port links would not be built. He called for a change to the “legal loophole” that required the federal environment minister to show he had taken account of “every single piece of evidence and document” on species protection, “not just the documents that count for having to make the decision”. “If the politicians are serious about these projects getting off the ground, if they’re serious about the jobs, they’ll fix this legal loophole once and for all,” Roche said. Roche accused activists and the state Environmental Defender’s Office for “exploiting[ing] every loophole in law federally and at the state level to disrupt and delay projects”. EDO Queensland’s principal solicitor, Jo Bragg, whose office has run a separate case challenging the Adani project in the Queensland land court, said this was “pretty incredible” and showed “grave disrespect for environmental laws in Australia”. “What we’ve found today is the federal court has found that Minister Hunt’s decision was invalid,” she said. “So in fact community groups are upholding the environmental laws and … have been appropriately scrutinising this major mine, the costs and benefits, in the land court.” Mackay Conservation Group’s coordinator, Ellen Roberts, told Guardian Australia the group would consider any subsequent approval by Hunt before deciding whether to remount its challenge on the grounds of climate change impacts and Adani’s environmental track record. The federal court ruling on Wednesday left these unresolved. “We’ll obviously be looking very closely at how [Hunt] handles those issues. We consider they were strong grounds for challenging the approval in the first place.”