Fast and just transition even more urgent in the Hunter following Vickery mine verdict

But the implications for Australian coal mining, and in fact all Australian emitting industries, of the case brought by teenage students is its real significance, and makes the need for leadership and courage in moving to a fast and just transition for coal export workers and their families in our region even more urgent.

The Minerals Council of Australia has played down the outcome, saying that the Vickery mine may still be approved, and of course this is correct.

But, with respect, this understates the implications.

First, even if the minister goes on to approve the expansion, court findings are binding on lower courts even on different fact scenarios so, absent a successful appeal, decisions about other types of emitting industries, and under other acts, may also be found to invoke the duty.

Second, the nature of the Australian policy and commercial landscape is - sensibly - to assume the essence of a ruling in an industry may also be held apply to other examples of it, even if no specific court case has found so, and to act accordingly.

Third, and here's the real kicker: in finding an obligation to prevent injury, the case opens a long-guarded citadel in climate law: exposure to damages claims by the children - and any children - against governments for future harm caused by emissions they approved.

Even if an appeal is successful, as the case made clear, the climate science is now so settled, foreseeability so obvious, surely further findings of duty are only a matter of time.

The evidence accepted by the court was clear: more than 90 per cent of Australia's existing coal reserves cannot be burnt; all currently operating coal mines must be phased out as soon as possible (preferably by 2030); and no more approved, if we are to act consistently with avoiding the catastrophic harm scenarios accepted in the case.

In uncontested evidence the court found that these catastrophic harms, contributed to by the mine, would include at least one million children being hospitalised or dying from heat or smoke stress by 2100; many thousands more suffering premature death from bushfire smoke and an eightfold increase in presentation to doctors, paramedics or hospitals for heat stress particularly when aged.

It found also that there would be 8 million more doctor visits attributable to impacts from climate change; increasingly serious rural mental health impacts brought about by drought; and the complete loss of the Great Barrier Reef and of most of Australia's eastern eucalypt forests.

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In Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg's words: "It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the world as we know it gone as well".

And this was just under the optimistic scenario.

And so the screaming vacuum of leadership in our region becomes only more apparent.

Where is the legislative enabling, the investment, the courage, from state and federal governments to implement the fast and just diversification to other industries by 2030 our region promises?

Hunter mines, including Vickery, are primarily for export, not local power, and a tsunami of renewable sources is just waiting in the wings for our local needs, including firming power - while on average two billion tonnes of emissions come from Hunter coal a year when burnt around the world.

And surely even without the court's finding on care, its acceptance of the evidence on future catastrophic harm means that ending coal in our region by 2030 has never been more urgent.

Surely in Justice Blomberg's words, allowing the predicted harm to occur would be "the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next."

But when will we act?

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