QLD fights a losing battle with Adani

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Via The Australian:

Indian energy giant Adani will be offered a reworked royalties deal at a discounted rate during the early years of coal production at its $16.5 billion Carmichael coalmine, after a meeting of senior Queensland cabinet ministers last night.

A compromise was struck ­between Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy, Jackie Trad, on the deal that will be used as a template to lure other resources companies into the state’s burgeoning ­Galilee and Surat basins and the northwest minerals province.

The Australian understands Adani will be given the cut-price flat rate for up to six years — understood to be several million dollars a year — but it will be eventually required to pay the ­entire amount of deferred royalties owed to taxpayers for coal ­extracted at its proposed Galilee Basin mine.

Adani will have to pay interest on the delayed amount.

Yeh, yeh. Given thermal coal remains in a huge global gut that will get worse not better, if it were to go ahead Adani won’t be paying anything back. It’ll get another holiday later.

Is it any wonder then that a majority oppose it, via The Guardian:

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Queensland voters have given the thumbs down to taxpayer support for the controversial Adani coalmine, with 59% saying they were opposed to state or federal assistance.

A new poll of 1,618 Queenslanders taken by ReachTel indicates 57% of the sample objected to a loan for a rail link between the mine and Abbot point, which is championed by the federal resources minister Matt Canavan.

Just over 50% of the sample said a decision by the Queensland government to grant the project a royalties holiday would be a broken election promise.

The poll was commissioned by the progressive thinktank the Australian Institute.

This is all pantomime. The mine still isn’t viable and if it were to actually try to go ahead then it will be a lightening rod for civil disobedience nationwide, not to mention in central QLD.

To my mind the political cost of trying to save a few seats from One Nation will not outweigh the broader cost. It’s the kind of issue that can tip the national centre.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.