No new coal. Our campaign to stop a new allocation of brown coal in Gippsland – the first step of a major new brown coal export industry for Victoria – continued to put pressure on the state government, and in December 2012 they decided to delay allocations for a second time. We released the report Undermined or Overburdened? Victoria’s brown coal: an economic perspective, highlighting the lack of economic rationale for new coal developments in Victoria.
We worked with local people who would be impacted by the allocations — meeting with landholders and residents in the Latrobe Valley to inform them of the Victorian Government’s plans and help them to understand their rights. We made sure the Yallourn mine collapse(s) was made public to show exactly why new mines should never be dug. The Environment Defenders’ Office assisted with a legal challenge to access government documents related to the allocation process that were blocked through Freedom of Information.