The Australian Conservation Foundation has announced it will be launching a new legal challenge against environment minister, Murray Watt over his decision to allow the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project (that will now run until 2070. Watt is yet to reject any proposal for coal or gas).

The ACF will argue Watt failed to “consider the devastating climate impacts” when he made the approval. It’s arguing that Watt was not legally permitted to exclude the climate damage caused by the project when making his decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It’s the second case ACF have filed against Watt this month and if successful could set a very important precedent for how these decisions are made.

ACF’s Legal Counsel Adam Beeson said in a statement:

When Labor came to power, we expected better. Minister Watt had clear scientific evidence and a chance to make a better decision than the previous Coalition government, but he backed in Sussan Ley’s flawed call and ignored the climate consequences of Woodside’s massive gas expansion.” 

…This gas project will generate nearly four billion tonnes of emissions. That’s almost ten times Australia’s annual domestic pollution. Yet our Environment Minister has decided that’s just a drop in the ocean. We vehemently disagree.

Beeson said the court was not the first choice, but the group, who are represented by Environmental Justice Australia, don’t have many other options.

Litigation is not easy. It’s risky and it’s expensive. We wouldn’t do this if we had any other option. And importantly, we wouldn’t have to take this route if Australia had strong nature laws to begin with, which made the government’s responsibility to deal with climate pollution crystal clear. 

But because our current nature laws are shockingly broken and favour polluting industries over the nature they claim to protect, litigation is necessary to argue that the Minister was required to deal with climate pollution.  

This case brings home why it’s so important Labor gets on with the task this week of making our national environment law actually work for nature.  

The test of Labor’s commitment will be the legislation that is tabled in Parliament this week. We need our new nature laws be up to the task of stopping terrible polluting projects from being rubber stamped in the first place.” 

Watt’s preference is to work with the Coalition on passing the legislation, bypassing the Greens who want stronger environmental protections.