Hearings Conclude in Landmark Federal Court Challenge Over Woodside’s North West Shelf Extension to 2070

Federal Court challenge to North West Shelf approval concludes hearings, with major implications for Australian project approvals

Overview

The Federal Court of Australia concluded four days of hearings on 24 July 2026 in Melbourne in what is shaping up to be one of the most consequential environmental law cases in Australian history. The case challenges Federal Minister for the Environment and Water Murray Watt’s decision to approve the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf (NWS) Project, Australia’s largest gas hub, allowing it to continue operating until 2070. The applicants are the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), represented by Environmental Justice Australia, and the Friends of Australian Rock Art (FARA), represented by Johnson Legal. Justice Catherine Button heard the arguments across four sitting days from 21 to 24 July 2026 and has reserved her judgement to a later date.

The case is not a conventional challenge to a resource project approval. It raises fundamental questions about the legal architecture of environmental assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act), specifically whether a Minister can lawfully approve a project without assessing its downstream greenhouse gas emissions, and whether the conduct of communications between a proponent and a minister’s office can amount to apprehended bias sufficient to invalidate an approval. These are questions that go well beyond the NWS Project itself. A ruling in favour of either or both applicants would have immediate and practical consequences for any high-emissions project currently in the referral, assessment, or approval pipeline anywhere in Australia.

For environmental practitioners advising developers, transaction lawyers conducting due diligence on resource and infrastructure assets, and in-house counsel managing approval risk, this case demands close attention. The legal arguments tested before Justice Button cut across disciplines: administrative law, international human rights law, climate science, and cultural heritage protection. The outcome will influence how Environmental Impact Statements are scoped, how proponents communicate with regulators, and how heritage impact assessments treat industrial emissions near nationally significant sites.

Key details of the arguments presented to Justice Catherine Button

The first and most legally novel argument concerned the treatment of Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. The ACF argued that Minister Watt acted unlawfully when he refused to assess the transboundary climate and ecological harms associated with the NWS Project’s projected lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. To put that figure in perspective, Australia’s total national greenhouse gas emissions for the year ending December 2023 were approximately 462 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, meaning the NWS Project’s lifetime emissions are roughly equivalent to more than eight years of the entire country’s current annual emissions. The argument was that the EPBC Act’s provisions governing Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) do not permit a decision-maker to simply exclude the downstream, or Scope 3, climate consequences of an approved action when those consequences foreseeably affect protected matters.

In an Australian first, the Federal Court accepted submissions from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño, in the role of amicus curiae (friend of the court). The Special Rapporteur’s submissions argued that the Australian government’s refusal to legally assess Scope 3 emissions is inconsistent with international law obligations regarding transboundary climate harm. The acceptance of this intervention is itself a significant procedural development. It signals that international human rights frameworks are now directly engaged in the interpretation of domestic environmental legislation, and that Australian courts are prepared to receive and weigh those submissions in contested approvals matters.

The second major line of argument concerned apprehended bias in the approval process. ACF barristers tendered to the Court approximately 200 text messages and emails exchanged between Woodside executives and the Minister’s office during the approval process. The applicants argued that the volume, nature, and informality of this correspondence went well beyond ordinary statutory consultation and gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias, suggesting the outcome of the assessment may have been pre-determined. The legal test for apprehended bias in administrative decision-making asks whether a fair-minded lay observer, properly informed, might reasonably apprehend that the decision-maker might not have brought an impartial mind to the decision. The 200 communications figure is a specific factual claim central to the applicants’ case on this ground.

The third substantive argument was advanced by FARA and focused on the Murujuga (Dampier Archipelago) National Heritage Place, which holds the world’s oldest and largest collection of rock art petroglyphs. FARA argued that the cumulative effect of industrial emissions from the NWS Project poses a severe and ongoing threat to the chemical integrity of the rock art. Murujuga is listed under the EPBC Act as a National Heritage Place, and the Act imposes obligations on decision-makers not to approve actions likely to have a significant impact on the National Heritage values of such places. The argument before the Court was that the approval failed to adequately assess or mitigate the emissions-related degradation of these heritage values, particularly the interaction between nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide emissions and the petroglyphs’ surface chemistry.

References and related sources

• Primary source: northeasttimes.com
• envirojustice.org.au
• envirojustice.org.au
• envirojustice.org.au
• acf.org.au
• EPBC Act

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This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.

Published: 27 Jul 2026

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