Rachel Fieldhouse
Legal

Why doesn’t the government have a duty of care to children’s futures?

Federal judges have deemed that the Australian government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect children from the harms of climate change, overturning last year’s landmark decision.

Eight teenagers and an 87-year-old nun convinced Federal Court judges that Susan Ley, the Australian Environment Minister, had a duty of care to protect children from future harm caused by climate change when assessing fossil fuel projects.

They initially sought an injunction to stop the expansion of a coal mine in New South Wales, which is expected to add an extra 170 million tonnes of fossil fuels to the atmosphere.

However, the injunction wasn’t issued since the judges believed the minister hadn’t yet violated her duty of care.

The government appealed the court ruling and all three judges sided with the minister for various reasons, including that there wasn’t “sufficient closeness” between the minister’s decision to approve the mine and “any reasonably foreseeable harm” that comes from it.

Despite the initial decision being successfully challenged, the teens could still take the case to the country’s highest court.

“Today’s ruling leaves us devastated, but it will not deter us in our fight for climate justice,” 17-year-old Anjali Sharma said in a statement released by the teenagers’ lawyers in mid-March.

15-year-old Izzy Raj-Seppings, another of the teens involved in the case, said their lawyers would review the judgement, and that “we may have more to say in the coming weeks”.

“While today’s judgement did not go our way, there is still much to celebrate. The court accepted that young people will bear the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis.”

Image: BBC News

Tags:
Legal, Court, Climate Change, Duty of care