Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s support for the Adani coal mine has been attacked by one of her own MPs who says coalminers are “worried sick” about losing their jobs because of the project.
During parliamentary Estimates hearings today, Labor MP for Bundamba Jo-Ann Miller challenged Ms Palaszczuk to model the impact on existing Queensland coal mines from Indian conglomerate Adani’s Carmichael coal project in the Galilee Basin.
Ms Miller – who quit Ms Palaszczuk’s Cabinet in late 2015 after being demoted from the Police Minister’s portfolio and went rogue during last year’s Estimates hearings – said existing coal miners and coal mines in Queensland were “worried sick” about the Adani mine driving down other existing investment.
Ms Miller said existing Queensland coal mines were at risk of closing if the Adani mine went ahead.
They have every right to be worried. Previously at the AFR:
Analysis by Wood Mackenzie commissioned by investment group The Infrastructure Fund estimates the railway could unlock north Queensland mines capable of producing more than 200 million tonnes of coal per year.
…”While Minister Canavan has previously stated that he is unconcerned with the impact of North Queensland coal expansion on NSW coal miners, our modelling also makes clear that Queensland’s Bowen and Surat Basins will also be hit hard by any flood of subsidised competition,” Mr Van Rooyen says.
“Minister Canavan’s billion dollar support for the Galilee coal basin is not just playing state against state, its mate against mate.”
Advertisement
That’s before you calculate the externalities of damage to the reef, tourism and climate change.
The thing is, no polly cares. They’re all busy chasing One Nation votes in central QLD with coal pork and damn the lifeboats.
If it were not for every other paralytically stupid resource policy in this country, this one would be the worst.
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.
