Albanese visits Queensland coal country to begin campaign to win trust

Anthony Albanese has a long, hard road ahead to win back trust in Queensland. This was a start.

Anthony Albanese visits Downer EDI, a train maker, in Maryborough on Friday, where he met Ken, centre, and Peter.

Anthony Albanese was embraced by no more than a dozen Labor members when he stood at his party’s birthplace in the dusty town of Barcaldine, in the heart of regional Queensland, and told ­locals he wanted to win them over.

The inner-Sydney MP arrived in coal country on Tuesday afternoon as his hometown was choking in smoke from the NSW bush­fires, turbocharging the ­debate over Australia’s role in climate change action including through coal exports.

But standing in front of the Tree of Knowledge, where the party’s founding document was read in 1892, the Labor leader ­declared he would welcome all new jobs, including through the Adani coalmine.

“I welcome jobs for Queenslanders in whatever project they are, it is as simple as that,” Albanese said in the drought-stricken town about 11 hours northwest of Brisbane. “The fact is that Adani has received its environmental ­approvals.”

Back in the big smoke, the ­electorate office phone was off the hook with complaints about the long-time member for Grayndler’s comments, but it was the only answer that would give Labor hope of winning over a ­region that feels maligned by the anti-coal sentiment of the progressive movement.

And it was somewhat unexpected, given Albanese had done a shaky press conference only hours earlier in Brisbane in which he ­refused to endorse the coalmine in the Galilee Basin.

By Wednesday, the Opposition Leader was outright pushing Adani to get on with its project, which is under construction. “They need to proceed with creating the jobs,” he said in Rockhampton, which will be a hub of employment for the project.

In his four-day road trip through central Queensland, ­Albanese never went as far as ­endorsing the Adani mine — a project that has become totemic in a nation locked in a bitter culture war over climate change. But he did voice his approval of the jobs Adani’s Carmichael mine will create, and only time will tell if this is enough for “Albo” to gain the trust of a region that unequivocally ­rejected his predecessor.

“We will win next time,” Albanese told party members in the town of Maryborough, in the seat of Wide Bay, on the final night of his tour.

“There is a bit of a view from some in the southern states, somehow, that Queensland has something against Labor. Well, let me tell you, you have been in ­government here for 20 of the past 25 years. There is no reason you shouldn’t hold seats like this in the federal parliament.”

By the time this almost brazen statement was delivered, Albanese had travelled more than 1000km by car over three days. He saw the moribund farmlands in areas worst affected by drought as he travelled from ­Barcaldine to Alpha to Emerald on day one, covering the federal electorates of Maranoa and Flynn.

Barcaldine mayor Rob Chandler, whose son is a coalminer, says federal Labor lost ground in central west Queensland because it failed to secure the support of workers in the resources industry. He says the area has been devastated by drought and its population had declined by 12.5 per cent since 2007 to 10,500. “We would love to see our communities have a windfall from having the Galilee Basin opened up,” Chandler says.

He said there was a perception that federal Labor wanted to close coalmines, which the party strongly denies and blames on a “scare campaign” led by Resources Minister Matt Canavan.

“For politicians to get up and just say, ‘Well, we are just going to close these coalmines, but we will retrain the miners.’ Retrain them into a $70,000 a year job when they are on $180,000. The banks would move into (his son’s) place tomorrow,” Chandler says.

On day two, Albanese’s staff competed with coal-carrying trucks on the drive to Rockhampton, in the seat of Capricornia, as the Labor leader sat on the phone to local radio ­stations telling listeners he was on their side.

Albanese was supposed to visit a coalmine on Wednesday but his media advisers claim it was cancelled because they could not lock in a tour within the time frame of the trip.

On Thursday he declared renew­ables was a solution to the heavy manufacturing industries in Gladstone as he visited Rio Tinto’s struggling Boyne Island aluminium smelter. “There’s a ­capacity to expand production here. But to do that they need to deal with the issue of energy prices and what they’re looking at is ­renewable energy,” he said.

Albanese then ventured to the Liberal-National stronghold of Hinkler for a tour of the Bundaberg Rum distillery before arriving in Maryborough, where on Friday he visited a train manufacturing facility. He finished his tour at a macadamia farm in Gympie, never wavering from his key message of “jobs”.

Federal Labor’s primary vote in Wide Bay is just 22 per cent but state Labor MP Bruce Saunders is proof the area can be persuaded to back the party. Saunders has lifted the primary vote of the state seat from 12 per cent in 2012 to 45 per cent at the last poll.

The outspoken MP says he had a laser focus on jobs in train manufacturing and forestry, and never spoke “gobbledygook” to his constituents. “We’ve gone back to the base here in Maryborough, and there are three things Labor people want: jobs, healthcare and education,” Saunders says.

“We’ve got factories coming here now, our unemployment rate for the first time in 25 years is dropping. You’ve got to be fair dinkum with people. If there is one thing regional Queenslanders don’t like it’s gobbledygook.”

Albanese was accompanied throughout the road trip by opposition regional services spokesman Jason Clare and Queensland senators Anthony Chisholm and Murray Watt. The MPs typically donned shiny Akubras and chinos rather than replicating Scott Morrison’s embrace of being an outsider in regional Australia and wearing a Cronulla Sharks cap and jeans.

The highest primary vote in the federal seats Albanese visited at the May poll was 28 per cent in the seat of Flynn (which includes Gladstone), where Labor went backwards by 7.6 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. “What they want firstly is respect,” Albanese said of regional Queenslanders. “They want jobs. They want things that other Australians want as well. They want a better future for their children.”

Respect is what regional Queenslanders didn’t feel from the progressive side of politics at the past election, with Labor failing to talk about the benefits of the coal industry while the Greens outright attacked the sector through Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy.

Albanese’s predecessor as Labor leader, Bill Shorten, hailed the potential jobs from the Adani project in 2017 but backflipped a year later and declared, in the heat of a by-election against the Greens for the inner Melbourne seat of Batman, that he did not support the mine. He was ambivalent about the project during the 2019 election campaign, which the Labor campaign review deemed cost the party votes in Queensland and the NSW Hunter Valley.

Last weekend in Sydney, at an “ideas” conference hosted by the Chifley Research Centre, Chisholm outlined the party’s “dire” standing in regional Queensland by declaring it did not hold a seat further north than Sandgate, a 25-minute drive from Brisbane’s CBD.

“We won the seat of Dawson (which includes Mackay, Bowen and parts of Townsville) in 2007 and our primary vote in (the booth of) Bowen was 57 per cent,” Chisholm said. “At the election just gone, the Labor primary vote in Bowen was 20 per cent. If the Adani coalmine was to go ahead, the coal would be exported from Bowen.”

The Labor mayor of Townsville, Jenny Hill, used the same conference to take aim at the party’s environmental wing, Labor Environment Action Network, saying it was viewed as “anti-worker” and “disruptive” and put regional Queenslanders “into the arms” of Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter.

“This term, over the last four years, we have been adamant: we support Adani,” Hill said. “The reason for that is when you have a youth unemployment rate of 21 per cent at one point and 13 per cent unemployment, particularly after the closure of Queensland Nickel, you have got a community that is crying out for support.”

The conference set the scene for Albanese to tell workers in the mining state he ­respected and supported their livelihoods.

A most unusual story was transmitted on local radio in Gladstone on Thursday morning. The bulletin focused on Labor’s long-term gripe about the casualisation of miners, an issue on which Shorten failed to gain any traction. ABC Capricornia broadcast quotes of Albanese slamming BHP for bringing in labour hire workers to a central Queensland coalmine who were earning 40 per cent less than full-time workers.

Labor’s hope is that now the party has articulated its support for coal jobs, miners may be willing to listen to Albanese’s plans to improve their working conditions.

The Labor leader has a long, hard road ahead to win the trust of north and central Queensland.

This week was a start.