Fresh voice joins the team
Former Mayor of Cairns and community leader Kevin Byrne has joined the Cairns Post’s team of regular, local columnists. Each Friday, Mr Byrne (above right) will offer his insight to our readers. He hits the ground running today, tackling the proposed Adani megamine and those that would have it stopped.
DOWN the road in Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton and communities to the west, folks are sweating on the Indian Adani conglomerate building Australia’s largest coalmine to feed power stations in India and elsewhere.
You see demand for our good quality coal is growing and people want to buy it and they like it.
Others are sweating uncomfortably too.
At stake here are political careers, political “power” alliances and government control.
Also at stake are the livelihoods of tens of thousands of workers and their families as well as the continuing economic development of Northern Australia.
This volatile brew is spilling over everywhere and the uncertainty and contradictions of State Government policies around royalties, and the confusion surrounding Federal Government infrastructure moneys (NAIF) has left many gasping and clutching at straws. Where to next? Potential investors are viewing with interest.
Of singular interest to me is how did we end up in this space anyway.
Every one of us knows that this is a development that ticks all the boxes.
We need the job creation benefits that this will bring to our struggling regions.
Projects like these are lifesavers and we need to embrace the opportunity.
People are linking this project to global warming. What gibberish. If we do not develop and export these resources, then Adani will acquire inferior quality coal from elsewhere.
There is no worldwide shortage of coal.
The fact is our coal is a better quality, it burns with less environmental downside and we are a plentiful, competitive and reliable supplier.
To lock it up and turn investors away is to take a wrecking ball to what is left of our struggling regional economy in the North, not to mention denying better lifestyle opportunities for others and taking a wrecking ball to them.
The ready acceptance of many of us to accept the intimidation, the moralising and the bullying tactics of strident environmental activism of some green groups and the likes of Getup about Adani is quite lamentable.
We have seen it in the past with the efforts of the US-based group PEW to shut us out of the Coral Sea.
That was a disgraceful campaign devoid of fact and funded largely by foreign interests. We are seeing similar things again. Make no mistake, we have just seen the start of what the moral activists are about to get up to.
The deliberate targeting of politicians in marginal seats via robocalls and trash social media has only just begun.
It is cowardice and the alliances around this divisive behaviour are just beginning to emerge.
In the midst of this, there is real talk around our preparedness as a nation to demonstrate our ability and willingness to provide consistency of messaging around energy costs and policy, land title issues, government regulations, investment incentives and the frequency of governments, state and federal, demonstrating their unwillingness to co-operate in the national interest on the tough issues.
This past week has demonstrated this in spades.
To add insult to injury, Queensland’s biggest miner Glencore has advised the Queensland Government that closing operations at Mt Isa (2000 jobs) is a very real option citing rising costs of energy, labour, freight and rail as impacting their business.
These are 24/7 operations 365 days a year and their electricity costs are rising 30 per cent annually.
They cannot keep going on unless there is real change. Now that will really hurt.
Adani has brought us to a defining crossroad.
Turn left and we are off the cliff. Turn right and we are in with a fighting chance of turning our region around. Kevin Byrne is a former Cairns mayor and long-time community leader. His opinions as stated in this column are his own.