Frontline Action on Coal

Six environment activists, who stopped a trainload of coal from Adani’s Carmichael mine and climbed machinery at Abbot Point coal terminal two weeks ago faced court today. Kerry Smith reports.

Juliet Lamont outside Bowen Bowen Magistrates Court on December 2. Photo: Frontline Action On Coal

A new report by Greenpeace, Global Warning: the threat to climate defenders in Australia, has identified an alarming escalation in repression against climate activists. Fred Fuentes reports.

Frontline Action on Coal activist Scott Daines has won a defamation dispute with Adani, reports Kerry Smith.

People from across the nation are heading up to the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland to put themselves on the line to stop Adani’s coal mine going ahead. Green Left Weekly’s Coral Wynter has just returned from a week at the Frontline Action on Coal (FLAC) protest camp.

Protesters blocked entry to the work site for Adani’s controversial Carmichael coalmine, in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland, for several hours on September 18.

Coral Wynter, who had joined the blockade from Sydney, told Green Left Weekly: “We blocked three gates of Adani’s workers’ camp for four hours, preventing several trucks from entering and leaving the site.”

A climate activist has locked on to machinery at Adani’s Carmichael coal mine site in Central Queensland a day after Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk announced penalties for climate protestors participating in civil disobedience.

Stop Adani activists blockaded Adani’s Abbot Point Road on July 22.

Green Left Weekly sponsored a public forum on May 28 on the future of the campaign for climate action following the win by the Coalition government in the May 18 federal election.

Marie Flood, from Stop Coal Seam Gas (CSG) Sydney and the Knitting Nannas, denounced the "big push" by the Murdoch press and the fossil fuel lobby for a rapid increase in coal mining and CSG production after the election. 

Adani has launched another public relations’ offensive in a bid to secure its last approvals before it can start work on its Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland.

Dozens of climate activists sprinted across mountains of coal, swarmed a massive coal loader, locked on to critical parts of the machine and shut down the largest coal terminal in the world, in Newcastle on September 15.

On September 13, Micah Weekes, once a coal miner and now an anti-coal activist stopped a coal train heading into the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle.

A former scaffolder from the Central Coast, Weekes worked in the coal industry for nearly 10 years. He said he was taking action because of the coal industry’s toxic impact on people’s health.

“You don’t have to work in the industry to get sick from this. My kids are going to get sick. It’s already happening. People in my community have reoccurring respiratory illnesses, cancers and tumours.”

Newcastle Police arrested a young man and woman for filming a peaceful protest on September 3, along with Sarah Barron, a Newcastle local, who had blocked all coal trains heading across Sandgate bridge for three hours. All three were taken into custody by around a dozen police, with the two who filmed the event being charged with “aiding and abetting”.

Barron was participating in “Act Up Newcastle” as part of the #EndCoal campaign initiated by Climate Justice group Frontline Action on Coal (FLAC), in collaboration with Newcastle Climate Justice Uprising.