Shadow transport and infrastructure minister, Anthony Albanese, ruled out any Labor attempt to alter environmental legislation to stop Queensland’s Adani mine project, while also making clear that the project would have to stand or fall on the economic viability of its business case without financial help from government.
Albanese said that, on that basis, the mine was unlikely to proceed, as the state Labor government has committed to a veto of any public subsidy to build a rail line.
“[W]e have a project that doesn’t have any finance, doesn’t have finance here in Australia, unable to raise funds in the US, unable to raise funds in China,” Albanese said during an interview with ABC radio.
“And therefore it is hard to see this project going ahead because of the economics of the project.”
Albanese’s statements came as Adani abandoned its latest deadline for securing financing for the project’s first stage.
Asked whether federal Labor would it hypothetically “support” the project if became economically viable, the shadow minister said the question was “absurd”, as the project had already received its environmental approvals. He then effectively ruled out a possible change by Labor of the Environmental Protection, Bio-diversity and Conversation Act (EPBC) a move that the Greens have promoted as a way of stopping the project.
“What we think is good policy happens when you establish good, proper settings … putting in place a policy framework which then drives a change across the economy,” he said.
“What you don’t do is single out particular projects and then retrospectively change existing laws which would have ramifications across the board.
“We haven’t said at any stage that we would do that. What we have said very clearly is because of what is happening in the global thermal coal market, which includes, by the way, India saying that they will not import coal after the next few years, is that there is not a market for this.”
Federal Labor’s stand on the Adani project has been evolving in recent months, though opinions within the party are not unified. Though Albanese has put the question of environmental impacts to one side, leader Bill Shorten has made critical noises about the environmental cost while, at the same time, attempting to affirm the party’s support for coal-mining jobs in Queensland.
Stronger words have come from Mark Butler, Labor’s climate spokesman, who said that the Adani project – along with the broader development of the Galilee Basin for mining – ought not to go head, as it would displace mining jobs in established coal regions and hamper Australia’s attempt to meet its Paris climate agreement obligations.