Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Someone was telling me that the one thing you could bet on was that Labor supported renewables and did not support the Adani coal mine in Queensland.

However:

Before the election the Queensland Labor government apparently gave Adani unlimited water rights, for the mine. This looks like enthusiastic support at the cost of many people in Queensland, especially with the current drought.

Labor, did not have to run their recent election campaign by accepting the fictional job figures that Adani promoted out of court, but severely diminished in court, and they did not have to avoid proposing any alternative projects which would bring more employment in the area.

Labor did not have to ignore the possibility the Adani mine could damage the water table, and destroy farms all down central Qld and NSW. They could also have made it clear they were not happy with the mine.

Labor did not have to support fracking in the Northern Territory against the wishes of the Aboriginal landholders, to show how eager they were to support renewables.

After the election, Labor did not have to support and help pass two motions in the Senate saying how wonderful the Adani mine was.

After the election, the Queensland Labor government did not have to rush to approve the mine, nor did they have to strip away the right of aboriginal owners to object. Nor did they have to drop prosecutions against Adani for breaking environmental conditions. They could have moved slowly, rather than with avid enthusiasm.

After the election Hunter Valley Labor candidate Joel Fitzgibbon was saying that Labor should have made it clearer that they were not anti-coal, during the election. Nobody, corrected him, so we can assume they are happy for that to stand.

After the election, Queensland party president John Battams gave a speech saying “Queensland Labor supports the coal industry” which most people would take as support for Adani.

If this is not supporting the mine, what would they do to support it?

Tags: climate change, coal, politics, renewable energy

This entry was posted on September 26, 2019 at 4:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.