Vote pits jobs against Great Barrier Reef

CONSERVATION

The fate of a multibillion-dollar coal mine hinges on weekend elections in Queensland state as voters weigh the promise of new jobs against a potential environmental threat to the Great Barrier Reef.

Australia’s Labor government has vowed to reject about $690 million in federal funding for a new rail link needed to carry coal to the coast for export. The opposition Liberal National Party, vying to win office in Saturday’s ballot, said that threatens the viability of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s $12.4 billion project, and with it the economic future of the resource-rich state.

As the world grapples with the fossil fuel’s role in the future energy mix, the proposed Carmichael mine has become a defining issue in the election. Opinion polls indicate the result is too close to call.

“This is the biggest specific issue in the election, and the way voters perceive the mine will swing a lot of votes,” said John Quiggin, an economics lecturer at the University of Queensland. State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s vow to block funding means Labor is “now seen in the anti-Adani camp,” he said.

Supporters say the mine will open up the Galilee Basin, a coalrich region bigger than the United Kingdom, and create thousands of new jobs in the struggling state. Queensland, hit hard by the end of a decade-long mininginvestment boom, has the nation’s secondhighest unemployment rate.

Opponents say Australia’s largest coal project would increase carbon pollution, exacerbating coral bleaching that’s already damaged large swathes of the world-famous reef.

Adani has repeatedly rejected concerns that the project or cargo vessels carrying coal exports to its Indian customers could damage the world’s largest living structure.

“The mine is 400 kilometers inland from the reef,” Ron Watson, a Brisbanebased spokesman for Adani Australia, said by email. “There has not been one incident in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in 50 years. The only threat to the reef is those who throw around wild accusations.”

Palaszczuk, 48, is seeking to win a second term for her center-left Labor party, which has been in minority government after elections in January 2015. She said she vetoed federal funding for the rail link this month to diffuse claims of a conflict of interest, as her partner is employed by a financial adviser to Adani.

The premier said she supports the mine but doesn’t “think taxpayer dollars should be going toward a billionaire to build a railway line.”

Liberal National state leader Tim Nicholls, 52, seized on the veto, saying Palaszczuk had “put thousands of jobs at risk with this extraordinary backflip.”