Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan’s four-year fight over MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine went all the way to the high court

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When Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan and a few of their neighbours in the New South Wales Hunter region decided to take on the expansion of a local coalmine, people thought they were “crazy” to engage in the David and Goliath battle.

“When we started this, people thought we were crazy – a little community group taking on a billion-dollar coal company, arguing that the climate harm from burning this coal is our problem too,” Wales says.

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Ruling on Mount Pleasant coalmine shows ‘we cannot continue to dig up coal … and pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us’, group says

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A Hunter Valley community group has won Australia’s first high court case to consider climate change, in a ruling advocates say sets a binding national precedent for fossil fuel projects in New South Wales.

In a landmark judgment, the nation’s highest court ruled that the approval of MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine expansion in Muswellbrook was invalid.