Promises are one thing the Hunter, NSW’s largest coal mining region, is not short on.
They include new jobs, the return of steel making to the old BHP site (26 years after it closed), the resumption of passenger train manufacture (13 years after it ended) as well as the proposed renewables precinct at the Mount Arthur Coal Mine, 5 kilometres south of Muswellbrook.
Glencore/Yancoal has also promised the state government that an extension of its two open-cut mines, Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) North and HVO South, will guarantee existing jobs. This is despite it sacking of 60 workers at the Mount Owen mine in 2014, shortly after being given approval to increase production.
Glencore wants the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) to allow extend the life of HVO North and South until 2045 and 2042, respectively. The mines operate across the banks of the Hunter River, along the Golden Highway near Singleton. Submissions to the IPC close on August 5 and it is expected to make a decision in September.
If the IPC rejects Glencore/Yancoal’s application, HVO North mine will close in December, affecting around 700 jobs as it produces 38% of the combined output of both mines.
HVO South, with around 800 workers, has a licence to operate until 2030.
“Continuation” approval by the IPC would pave the way for the largest coal mine in NSW’s history to be created. It would produce 400 million tonnes (MT) of coal, generating 800 MT of climate pollution annually.
The proposal is controversial in the Hunter because it poses the questions in a binary way: are jobs or environment protected?
This has led to mine workers, in their high visibility gear, and climate activists from Lock the Gate Alliance (LTGA) and Rising Tide mobilising at the IPC’s public hearings and urging their supporters to make submissions.
LTGA argues that as Glencore/Yancoal’s do not have a “mine exit strategy”, which is supposed to mitigate adverse social and community impacts when a mine closes, it should not be allowed to continue. This was a condition of HVO North’s approval in 2004, but it vanished after Glencore was given a temporary extension last year.
Glencore International claims it does have policies to manage mine closures and environmental issues, and a transition for mine workers and local communities.
However, IndustriALL, the international trade union body, said the multinational corporation has consistently refused to negotiate a fair and just transition for its workers.
the London Mining Network and Global Witness have drawn attention to Glencore’s bad record, noting in 2022 that it had plead guilty to bribery and corruption charges in Brazil, Venezuela and six African countries.
This bad record adds to questions about the extent to which Glencore claims that HVO can realistically deliver on its promise to provide 1500 ongoing jobs and 600 temporary construction jobs.
Coal market insecure
The coal market may not be as solid as HVO and its supporters claim. Over the last 50 years, the coal industry in Australia has gone from depression and job cuts in the mid-1980s and the early 2000s, to a jobs peak at 55,000 in 2014. After that, jobs started to decline again and by 2022 they had fallen to 34,300, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The industry body NSW Mining claims that the Hunter has 14,584 direct coal mine jobs.
Whatever the number, coal from the Hunter is heavily dependent on China, which buys 27% (around 40MT) of the region’s output. However, China is shifting away from coal to wind and solar power for its electricity generation and it plans further cuts by 30MT over the next five years.
Multinational mining company BHP is also shifting from thermal coal to focus on copper — vital in renewables.
But Glencore’s global CEO Gary Nagle is looking to the past. During his visit to Australia in 2024, he implied that the last shovel of coal that goes into a furnace anywhere in the world will be from a Hunter mine.
Glencore’s record on the long-term welfare of mine workers, their families and communities, especially when the mines inevitably close, also needs to be interrogated.
Fair Work Australia called Glencore out in 2017 for “unfair and capricious” conduct during a dispute at the Oaky North mine. In addition, the company is currently attempting to push workers on to a two-tiered pay structure at the Ravensworth and Wambo mines.
Glencore’s public relations machine is talking up charity donations, contracts to suppliers, royalties and taxation contributions, as well as jobs at the current IPC deliberations. Its apparent munificence comes as Glencore received a $349 million diesel refund.
Meanwhile, people living in the Hunter continue to suffer the detrimental health impact of coal particulates, which costs the region’s health care system an estimated $1 billion a year.
The cost of fighting climate change-driven bushfires is also mounting.
The IPC should reject Glencore’s bid to extend its operations and it should demand that Glencore offers a strong transition package for affected miners and their communities.
If it approves HVO’s licence, it must make it conditional on Glencore ensuring intergenerational equity and ecologically sustainable development. That means asking the NSW government to impose a levy on the coal that is produced to ensure a transition fund for workers. Either way, within the next four to 19 years, the mine will close.
This is about holding a multinational to account for its long-term environmental and social responsibilities it appears to want to avoid, and not so much an “environment versus jobs” issue.
The Hunter is still waiting for promises made during its de-industrialisation (steel, manufacturing and textile production) to be delivered. The time to impose a levy is now when coal prices are high and the industry is booming, not when coal is exhausted and the community and state is left with the consequences.
[Join the protest against coal mine expansions on August 8, 10am, Martin Place, near Phillip Street, CBD. Steve O’Brien, a former Newcastle steelworker, retrained to work in TAFE and taught sociology and public policy. He is contesting the seat of Newcastle for Socialist Alliance in the NSW election.]