CFMEU threatens MPs over Adani coalmine

The CFMEU will demand Bill Shorten’s candidates across Queensland pledge support for the coalmining industry.

Residents of Camperdown in Sydney’s inner west protesting against coal mining yesterday. Picture: AAP

The CFMEU will demand Bill Shorten’s candidates across Queensland pledge support for the coalmining industry — including Adani’s controversial Carmichael mine — or face the wrath of union campaigners in their seats at the federal election.

Amid warnings that five other coal projects totalling $30 billion of investment would be threatened if activists succeeded in thwarting Adani’s project, the mining union has revealed it will endorse individual candidates in the battleground state rather than give blanket support to Labor.

The move comes after Queensland’s Labor government stalled the proposed mine by outsourcing an 11th-hour review of the company’s plan to protect an endangered finch to a Melbourne academic attacked by the union as biased against coal.

The CFMEU’s initiative puts the left-wing union on a collision course with the faction’s leader in the Queensland parliament, Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, whose inner-city seat is targeted by the Greens.

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CFMEU Mining and Energy Queensland president Steve Smyth warned that allowing activists to stop Adani would encourage the same tactics against other mines.

“We will request a pledge from them … If you want support for us, you pledge your support for the coal industry,” Mr Smyth told The Australian.

“If we have to, we will campaign against those MPs no matter which party they’re in. Even if they’re perched up in the little cosy suburbs somewhere in the southeast drinking their lattes.”

Mr Smyth said the coal pledge would leave no “grey area” for MPs to support the Palaszczuk government’s approach to Adani.

“If this (mine) doesn’t get the tick of approval, it demonstrates to opponents of coal that if you keep agitating — even around some things that are purely nonsense — you’ll get an outcome,” he said.

“We have no doubt this is a stalking horse to stop all mining in the Bowen Basin.”

Mr Smyth savaged the Palaszczuk government’s decision to obtain an external review of Adani’s black-throated finch management plan from Melbourne University’s Brendan Wintle, who tweeted a photograph last November of two children holding a placard that read, “I’ll stop farting if you stop burning coal”. He has drafted extraordinary new safeguards that will threaten the project.

Mr Smyth said the government should rely on its own officials, who developed the management plan with the company over 18 months and seven drafts.

Despite Adani’s mine being stalled, the Indian conglomerate remains the only company committed to building a railway that would unlock Queensland’s remote Galilee Basin — a vast untapped coal province that geologists say could yield more than 27 billion tonnes of coal over decades.

In a region plagued by high unemployment, the six proposed Galilee Basin coalmines would collectively provide 24,100 jobs — including 11,200 ongoing positions — and produce up to 165 million tonnes each year.

Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan predicted the Galilee Basin’s development would be set back by at least a decade if the Adani coalmine were scuttled.

“There’s no one else willing at this stage to put up the billions of dollars of funding that would be required to connect the basin to port,” Senator Canavan said.

“If Adani can’t proceed, it’s hard to see anyone on the horizon that would do that.”

The Palaszczuk government’s spokesman said Labor had facilitated more than $9bn of investment in resource projects, supporting 5500 jobs, since 2015.

“The decision to request a review of Adani’s management plan for the black-throated finch was made independently by the Department of Environment and Science,” he said.

“Adani was offered the opportunity to have a detailed briefing from the independent panel that completed the black-throated finch review but the company declined.”

Adani has been invited to provide submissions to Dr Wintle’s review, but the company believes his draft report is so flawed that it is “not, in our view, amenable to rectification”.

Senator Canavan said Adani’s mine was also the best hope for the black-throated finch, since the company had promised “to build a 33,000ha finch hotel” to preserve the bird.

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane said Carmichael’s fate would send an “important signal” to investors looking at all industries in Queensland.

“We have to make sure Queensland keeps its reputation as a stable place to invest,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“If all six major projects in the Galilee Basin were to proceed they would create around 13,900 construction jobs and about 12,800 jobs during operations.”

Queensland looms large in the federal election as the Coalition holds 21 of the state’s 30 seats, including eight that would fall on a swing of 4 per cent.

Mr Smyth said the union was likely to endorse Labor candidates such as coalminer Russell Robertson in Capricornia and AWU organiser Zac Beers in Flynn. Coalition MPs were unlikely to win CFMEU support, since they had not backed the union on other industrial issues.

Australian Mines and Metals Association acting chief executive Tara Diamond said the Adani debate had “played out extremely poorly from a sovereign-risk perspective”.

“Investors can’t afford to have government policy whimsically shifting based on short-term politics influenced by noisy minority activist groups,” she said.