Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 25 July 2022
ENVIRONMENTALISTS CELEBRATE FEDERAL COURT WIN
This will bolster Plibersek’s hand – Bob Brown
The decision of the Federal Court by Justice Mark Moshinsky to uphold Bob Brown Foundation’s challenge to the former Environment Minister’s decision allowing Chinese state-owned miner to commence work on their toxic waste dump in Tasmania’s takayna / Tarkine rainforests, is one of the most significant decisions in environmental law made since the EPBC Act’s inception in 1999.
The precautionary principle is critical to the environmental assessment of projects when not enough is known about the impacts of a development.
“This decision tells miners, loggers and other big project proponents that they can no longer profit from the uncertainty that follows a lack of quality scientific investigation,” Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.
“The consequence of this decision for MMG’s mine in northwest Tasmania is significant. MMG must cease work and the new minister, Tanya Plibersek, will need to start the assessment afresh to consider the Tasmania masked owl. The masked owl was not considered at all in Minister Sussan Ley’s assessment decision made on 6 January 2022,” Jenny Weber said.
“This is huge. It is a judgement of environmental law which will extend beyond Tasmania’s takayna / Tarkine rainforest and its threatened wildlife to threatened environments all across Australia, Bob Brown said. “It will bolster Tanya Plibersek’s hand in defending threatened species from the Tarkine to Cape York to the Burrup Peninsula.”
“Judge Moshinsky has simply upheld that the precautionary principle, which predicates decisions on the environment by the federal minister, is mandatory. Minister Sussan Ley failed to ensure its application, in particular in relation to the giant Tasmanian masked owl. In fact, she overlooked the impact of the loss of forest on the threatened Tasmanian masked owl altogether. Her delegate did not bring the ‘active intellectual process’ required in applying the precautionary principle. The minister, totally responsible for the delegate’s decision, failed in her obligation,” Bob Brown said.
“Here is a remarkable opportunity for Tanya Plibersek to right the terrible wrong of Sussan Ley’s failure. The nation’s environmentalists will be counting on her to apply the law and protect this ancient rainforest and all of its threatened wildlife, trees and ecological communities. MMG has options to dispose of its acid mine outside the Tarkine, in particular by pulverising them and returning them as paste fill to the mine spaces below,” Bob Brown said.
“The Commonwealth should compensate all of the nearly 100 forest defenders who have been arrested peacefully getting in the way of MMG’s wrongly licensed wrecking operations. They are the environmental citizen heroes who stood firm when the minister and government failed them and the law,” Bob Brown said.
