The construction of the Adani Carmichael mine should be complete in a shorter time than it took governments to assess Adani’s black throated finch management plan.
How have we ended up in a country where it takes longer to think about doing something than it actually takes to do that thing?
The Adani mine took a full decade just to get its approvals and it now looks like it will be built within about 18 months, pending rain, this summer. The New Acland mine has been waiting 13 years for its approvals. We educate a child in a shorter time than it has taken this mine to get going.
One reason these projects are taking so long is that radical, green activist groups have been using our court systems to hold up jobs being created.
This is a dedicated strategy that greenies have adopted to delay projects long enough so that investors give up and go home. These court actions are not taken to win, they are taken to delay things.
In 2011, a group of green groups - including Greenpeace, GetUp!, PEW and the Environmental Defenders Office - met to discuss how they could stop the coal industry. They produced a strategy document titled “Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom”, which was later leaked to the media. In that document they said that “the first priority is to get in front of the critical projects to slow them down in the approval process. This means lodging legal challenges to five new coal port expansions, two major rail lines and up to a dozen of the key mines. This will require significant investment in legal capacity.”
And that is what these groups have done. Right now the New Acland mine remains held up because of court action backed by the Environmental Defenders Office Queensland. The New Acland mine is an expansion of the “old” Acland mine. If this project does not proceed there will be no work for the 500 coal miners at New Acland. They will lose their jobs.
The Queensland Government has granted all of the environmental approvals to the New Acland Mine. Normally this would then lead to the government granting a mining licence so that work can start. Instead, the Queensland Government has said that it won’t issue the mining licence until the Green-backed court cases are complete.
This is an unprecedented position. There is nothing to stop the Queensland Government issuing the mining licence even though a court case is underway. Court action is taken against businesses all the time. A company does not sack everyone just because someone lodges a claim.
The New Acland mine could begin now. There is probably not much chance of the greenies winning in court but that is not their aim. They are just trying to hold things up.
Now, by refusing to issue the mining licence, the Queensland Labor Government is a willing partner in holding up these jobs. Worse, the Labor Government, that purports to support jobs, provides the Environmental Defenders Office with taxpayer funds. In 2017-18, the Environmental Defenders Office received 45 per cent of its funding from the Queensland Government, that is from your taxes.
If the Labor party supports mining jobs, why are they handing over taxpayer funding to radical groups that try to stop these jobs?
The LNP leader, Deb Frecklington, has promised to strip these groups of taxpayer funds. These radical green groups should be defunded because why should your taxes go to groups who want to put you out of a job?
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