New Coal Mines are a Bad Idea (Seriously)
A map of coal mines in the Sydney-Gunnedah basin
For a while, Newcastle and the Port of Newcastle was where coal in the Hunter Valley would be transported, to be exported later. In recent years, the demand for coal globally has declined. This is primarily because nations are attempting to decrease their emissions (even to a meagre degree), and have “transitioned” to other fuel sources such as renewables and gas.
Despite this, there are still many politicians, primarily conservative talking heads, who continue to insist that coal has a future. You've probably heard of them before: figures such as Mark Latham, Joel “Coal” Fitzgibbon and John Barilaro, three men who stroke the faces of workers with one hand and take money from coal industrialists with the other.
These men don't care about workers. When they push constantly to open new coal mines, they aren't doing it to help the workers, because most coal mines (such as the proposed Adani projects in Queensland, which would be almost entirely automated) are automated. Coal mines across NSW, for example, had already been laying off scores of workers.
So the issue isn't one of worker's rights, because even the CFMMEU (Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union) acknowledges that there is a need for a transition away from coal and fossil fuels entirely. Not a “transition” to a different kind of non-renewable, a transition away from non-renewables completely.
If these men won't listen to the workers themselves, why do they pretend to care about them? Because they don't care about the workers, although that much was obvious to begin with. They care about increasing the profit of the coal industry, which they clearly have a stake in.
New coal projects in the Upper Hunter are, quite frankly, a bad idea. This is primarily because building new coal mines does not help existing coal workers. Would building a new hotel in Cairns help out struggling tourism workers? Of course it wouldn't, and neither would new coal mines in the Upper Hunter, especially when (as was stated before) many of these coal mines would be primarily automated.
Coal mines are a blight on the environment. They not only destroy the local area, they leave lasting effects and are major pollutants. Instead of building new coal mines in the Upper Hunter, the government should invest in more agricultural or tourism-related projects which would do more to boost the local economy than any coal mine could ever do in a decade.
Building new coal mines in such a moment where climate action is critical is simply ill-minded. Australia needs to make a fair transition to renewables that helps the workers in the outdated industries, and this is only possible through working with unions, something that conservative talking heads are chronically allergic to.
For more insight on the “future” of coal, you should read the IEA's 2020 report.