Labor can no longer pretend it supports Adani

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, left, and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, right. Picture: AAP

Annastacia Palaszczuk may be Premier but the Queensland Labor government is being run by her deputy Jackie Trad and the Left faction.

The last-minute external review now threatening to scuttle the Adani project, as it finally looked like getting off the ground, would never have happened just a few years ago.

For decades, it was Palaszczuk’s own right-leaning Australian Workers Union that dominated Queensland Labor as it shepherded in the liquefied natural gas industry and rolled out the carpet for Adani when it first proposed the Carmichael mine in 2010.

Back then, the mantra of the government was about investment and jobs the projects would deliver.

Now the Left and Trad hold the majority on the ALP conference floor and the parliamentary caucus, and the agenda has given way to the demands of allied activists and the threat of the Greens in the inner city.

Trad led a cabinet revolt to scuttle a royalties deal that Palaszczuk offered Adani two years ago — on a trip to India — and then the Premier vetoed a federal loan to the company during the 2017 election after protesters overwhelmed her campaign.

Last year, Tim Seelig — one of Queensland’s most prominent anti-Adani activists and known to be close to Trad — was appointed as principal policy adviser to the director-general of the Department of Environment.

It is that same department, consulted closely by Adani for 18 months in developing a plan to protect the black-throated finch, which took the extraordinary step of ordering the review now endangering the mine.

That review was commissioned just weeks after Adani overcame its biggest hurdle, announcing it had secured finance for the project.

Palaszczuk, in her inaction, and Trad, in her actions, can no longer pretend they support Adani or the jobs it could deliver.

The irony is the coal industry rescued Trad in her first budget last year, delivering a $3.7 billion boost in royalties to pay for the ballooning public service and infrastructure spending.