State puts finches before jobs

Four years ago it was yakka skinks and ornamental snakes. Now it is black-throated finches — and the economically inept Queensland Labor government — delaying the start of Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal project in central Queensland’s Galilee Basin. After eight torturous years of vigilante green lawfare, red tape and clearing environmental hurdles, the mine should be ready to build. All approvals and finance were in place. But the Palaszczuk government, despite its dismal failure to encourage investment and private sector jobs growth in the state, has shifted the goalposts at the 11th hour, putting yet another obstacle in the project’s way. Last month, it appointed Brendan Wintle, director of the taxpayer-funded Threatened Species Recovery Hub, to review Adani’s southern black-throated finch management plan. This week the government missed its deadline in handing the report to Adani. The company has identified multiple weaknesses in the report.

Professor Wintle has been at pains to point out he was engaged as a “University of Melbourne expert’’ and that the hub he leads in Queensland was not involved in the review. His credentials might interest green activists in Treasurer Jackie Trad’s inner-Brisbane electorate. But they will be cold comfort for unemployed workers and their suffering families in regional areas and cities such as flood-ravaged Townsville, where 16,000 jobs have been lost since 2011.

A recent analysis of jobs data by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland concluded the northern city had reached a tipping point and was facing structural decline without Adani’s coalmine and other projects. The fate of the Carmichael mine will be a turning point for the Queensland and national economies. As growth in China slows, the mine represents a vital opportunity for Australia to strengthen its trading and investment ties with India, an emerging economic superpower with which we share a democratic and cultural heritage. At a time when India is desperate to import quality coal to drive development, modernisation and living standards, the Carmichael mine would be the first opened up in the Galilee Basin. The basin is a vast, untapped­ coal province geolo­gists believe could yield more than 27 billion tonnes and employ 15,000 coalminers across six projects. Australia’s sovereign risk profile, a potential killer for overseas investment, is at stake.

The International Energy Agency notes that coal supplies a third of all energy used worldwide and 38 per cent of electricity, and plays a crucial role in iron and steel making. If the Galilee Basin remains untapped, which appears to be the Palaszczuk government's preference, other nations will fill the breach, most likely with poorer quality coal that would create more greenhouse gases. As a result, Queensland, Australia’s most heavily indebted state, would continue to languish. In the most recent CommSec State of the States report it was rated sixth, behind even South Australia. Queensland’s s alarming seventh-place ranking on business investment was an indictment of Ms Trad and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who loves to be liked but whose major achievement is blowing out the size of the state’s public sector payroll. In four years her government has not grasped the link between investment and jobs.