Five days before approving mine expansion, Minns held an intimate fundraiser

October 22, 2026 — 5:00am

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Five days before NSW Premier Chris Minns announced he would intervene to grant the Indonesian mining company MACH Energy legislated approval to dig up millions of tonnes more coal each year at its Hunter Valley mine, he held an intimate boardroom lunch fundraiser.

According to electoral disclosures, Coal Australia, an industry lobby group, was among the attendees. A few weeks earlier, its chief executive Stuart Bocking had labelled the High Court’s seismic ruling that the mine’s 2022 approval was invalid because planning authorities had not properly considered emissions from Australian coal burnt overseas as “utter madness”.

Bocking - who was not at the fundraiser personally - was much happier on Monday. He hailed Minns’s “decisive action” and said the lobby group had, in fact, urged th e government to do exactly what the premier had now promised: use legislation to “provide certainty for project approvals, such as MACH Energy, to avoid costly, time-wasting and frivolous legal action from activists”.

Did the government greenlight an extremely fraught........

© The Sydney Morning Herald