Taxes pay for failures

DENIS Walls’s April 25 article “Aquis was always just fantasy” is a timely warning against those who want us to believe that putting money into their pet projects will return endless rivers of jobs and gold.

But Adani mining and Trinity Inlet dredging proponents are still trying to extract money from the poor old tax payer.

The facts: the price of thermal coal would need to rise from $60 to $100 per tonne, and stay above $100 for 40 years for Adani to be financially viable.

The 2014 LNP-commissioned dredging EIS stated that it would cost $365m (to dredge the inlet) and the 2015 JCU study stated that it would not produce any significant economic benefit. Sean McGinn, Clifton Beach 1509: Pope Julius II excommunicates the

Italian state of Venice. 1521: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand

Magellan is killed in the Philippines. 1896: Death of Sir Henry Parkes,

Australia’s “Father of Federation”. 1941: Athens falls to German invaders after 180 days of Greek resistance in World War II. 1950: Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies introduces a bill to outlaw the Communist Party. 1961: Sierra Leone becomes

independent from Britain. 1976: First Vietnamese refugee boat

people arrive in Darwin. 1982: Trial of John Hinckley Jr, who shot four people including US President Ronald Reagan, begins in Washington; Hinckley is acquitted by reason of insanity. 1997: Hong Kong officially opens the world’s longest road-rail suspension bridge, linking the colony to its new offshore airport. 2000: Palaeontologists unveil a twomillion-year-old skull of a female Paranthropus robustus, a cousin of early man. The fossil was found in South Africa. 2002: Mattel toy company co-founder Ruth Handler (above), who created Barbie, dies in Los Angeles aged 85. 2012: The space shuttle Enterprise sails over New York on top of a modified jumbo jet on its final flight before it becomes a museum piece.