Australians Sue Government at UN Over Coal, Gas Exports
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- The group of ten Australians filed the claim after losing friends in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, being trapped during 2022 Brisbane floods, and being displaced by catastrophic flooding along Western Australia's Fitzroy River — extreme-weather events they attribute to government support of fossil fuel companies.
- Dr Barry Traill, a wildlife ecologist and volunteer firefighter, said the 2009 Black Saturday deaths and 2019 Black Summer blazes proved 'climate change is not a future problem' but is 'already killing people and hurting lives, landscapes and communities across Australia.'
- Brendon Donohue, who lives with blindness and mobility challenges, was trapped in his Brisbane apartment for 10 days during 2022 floods when power loss disabled the building's lifts, intercom and exits.
- Prof Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region, was displaced from the Fitzroy River catchment and warned of 'intergenerational loss of cultural knowledge' tied to the land and waterways.
- Hannah White, senior lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia, said the group is asking the UN committee to declare it unlawful for Australia to continue approving and subsidising coal and gas for export without a plan to protect people from dangerous climate change.
- Any UN ruling is not legally binding, but Australia — one of the world's largest coal and gas exporters — would be expected to respond, and the case follows the ICJ's July 2025 ruling that countries can be sued over climate change, including for historic emissions.
Why it matters: This is the first international legal test of the ICJ's July 2025 ruling against a country that is one of the world's largest coal and gas exporters, giving ten named Australians a high-profile platform even though any UN decision is non-binding. A committee finding that Australia's approval and subsidising of fossil fuel exports breaches human rights could embolden similar claims by climate-affected communities elsewhere.
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