Barnaby Joyce has confirmed that the government’s 2050 net-zero commitment will include a plan to subsidise an increase in coal exports, thereby increasing global greenhouse emissions. As part of the price extracted by the Nationals to support net zero by 2050, the government will commit at least $3 billion and likely more to an extension of its inland rail line that will exist only to increase coal exports from the Surat Basin in Queensland.
The government’s own figures show massive investment has no commercial basis, but will provide subsidised carriage of coal to the port of Gladstone — thus subsidising coal exports.
Joyce told ABC Brisbane last night that (as predicted by Crikey) “you can lock it in” when asked about the extension of the disastrous inland rail line to Gladstone — expected to blow out the cost of the project from $15 billion to $20 billion. Bizarrely, the Canberra press gallery, which is obsessively focused on what deal Morrison can engineer with the Nationals over a net zero commitment, completely ignored the announcement.
The cost of the inland rail project from Melbourne to Brisbane has already blown out twice, from $4.9 billion to $10 billion and subsequently $15 billion. Proponents have been pushing to extend the line — which will never make back its construction costs and is unlikely to cover its operating costs — an extra 540 kilometres from Toowoomba to Gladstone, an idea that has received support from both sides of politics.
According to a pre-feasibility study conducted by the Infrastructure Department, the link to Gladstone would cost $5 billion for a coastal route and $3 billion for an inland route, “with the economic impacts of the alignments indicating poor (and highly uncertain) economic returns”. The only beneficiary would be coalminers in the Surat Basin, given neither farmers nor freight haulers would find much use for it.
Indeed, the study suggested that a $1 billion narrow gauge line from Wandoan to Banana to link up to the existing Queensland Rail network might produce a marginal benefit: “This route is intended to unlock coal reserves in the Surat Basin and offer an alternative and more efficient access to export coal markets.”
The current inland rail project, which according to its 2015 business case will lose billions over its life, exists only to provide easier access to ports for coal exporters. Coal will form more than half the entire haulage on the line, which will, in terms of its business case, “be a catalyst for additional coal exports from south-east Queensland to the Port of Brisbane”. With the Gladstone expansion, the line will represent another $3 billion subsidy to coal exporters. Based on the blowout in costs for the existing project, the Gladstone extension may end up costing $9 billion to $12 billion.
Joyce has tried to argue that the inland rail project is a carbon abatement initiative given the number of trucks it will take off the road. However, the Gladstone extension confirms that the entire project is a $20 billion-plus subsidy for coalminers to increase exports, significantly adding to global warming.
The Morrison government’s “net-zero” commitment will thus be reliant on an increase in the carbon emissions.
You could not make this up!
If it was a screenplay or novel no producer or publisher would touch it due to the sheer implausibility.
Why don’t the Liberals run candidates in all Nationals seats at the next election? I don’t understand why they don’t.
Sadly, MA, they wouldn’t get in. Nationals voters, on the whole, don’t swing; they are as immobile as Uluru or the Olgas. And like these majestic rocks, they do not think, they simply are. To not vote for the Nats is to not breathe, to not have a heartbeat, to not exist as who they are.
I think there is some rule within the Coalition that both parties cannot compete against each other in any single electorate. Not sure if this is just in Qld or throughout Oz.
Yeah. They won’t run if the other party has a candidate unless the seat’s been lost.
So for example, in my seat of Gilmore, we had both Liberal and Nationals candidates run last federal election. It was a National-held seat years and years go until Labor picked it up. It then fell to the Liberals. Now it’s back to Labor.
Katrina Hodgson ran for the Nats in 2019 and Warren Mundine for the Liberals.
Technically it can’t happen in Queensland because there is no coalition, only one (Liberal National) party.
One of the few – only? – things that we know about the top secret, not for public eyes, coalition agreement which allows a pair of minor parties to combine their vote to keep a third one of of office, is that neither will contest seats “belonging” to the other.
Democracy – gotta luv it.
Even if they do, preference flows between Lib and Nat usually ensure the candidate with the larger vote eventually gets the votes for the conservative side. But the parties are often reluctant to do it because preference flow is not 100%. Sometimes, like in Gilmore at the last election where there’s a wide open field, they can benefit each other by picking up a wider range of voters than either candidate would singly.
Of course it didn’t work in Gilmore and Hodgson (Nat) and Mundine (Lib) were beaten by Fiona Phillips (ALP), who had the assistance of preferences from the Greens.
With every other country on Earth trying to reduce carbon emissions, exactly who do they think is going to buy the exported coal?
This isn’t just a waste, it’s a waste with an expiry date.
I despair.
Sue, don’t give up.The darkest hour is just before dawn. I am viewing the current political situation like the early part of the classic movie “Jaws’. The coal lovers are the naive swimmers and the rational Australian citizens are the “Jaws’.
The antidote to despair is courage, not hope. (Chris Hedges)
Agreed.
Thanks Richard, good reminder!
touche, after the last ‘win’ their ‘right to rule’ was reinforced to the degree that their arrogance/true colours his been on display since. I don’t think most Australians will buy it again (despite murdoch green wash) esp in NSW where two levels of Christian right in power is unpalatable. imo labors best hope is small target, but hope like blazes behind the silence they have a solid agenda.
Unfortunately the ALP, like the Coalition, is signed up to the real cause of all our problems, namely, the neo-Keynesian economic orthodoxy currently in place, which insists governments must get out of the the way of the private sector free market.
So the ALP cannot have a ‘solid agenda’ which is capable of achieving much more than the Coalition, because both sides are constrained by the reality of being limited to raising funds by taxing or borrowing from the private sector……hence the “deficits that will burden our grand-children’ nonsense of mainstream commentators who abuse our intelligence everyday.
But a government with its own treasury and central bank CAN influence market outcomes without being subject to that constraint; by observing that the real constraint for a currency-issuing government is the nation’s resources and productive capacity, not debt or deficits (see Stephanie Kelton’s best-seller: ‘The Deficit Myth’). And also:
ROSS GITTINS: Funding the budget by printing money is closer than you think
Need funds to retrain coal workers for the new hydrogen industry? Only government can do it, without implementing carbon taxes which increase prices for those least able to bear them.
Fortunately there is a MMT-literate party standing at the next federal election. A balance of power situation might produce a remarkable shake up of the existing grid-locked political-economic system.
‘neo-Keynesian economic orthodoxy currently in place, which insists governments must get out of the the way of the private sector free market.’
Don’t you mean libertarian or neoliberal? How is MMT different from deficit funding of budgets when needed (many other complicating factors)?
Meanwhile any remotely Keynesian policies are slammed by the LNP, IPA, NewsCorp etc. except when, as former PM Howard said on Covid, ideology does not matter in such times (and the Anglosphere sees ideological outcomes of not planning/funding epidemic responses).
Question is when is libertarian ideology fit for purpose versus being a Christian based belief system and pecking order?
The deafening silence of the Federal Labor in responding to anything the Federal Liberals do, has me very worried that Morrison might just get re-elected.
Morrison submitting to the Bonkaby blackmail – so much for these criminals being the best economic managers and so much for their commitment to a carbon free country
The trouble is that our transactional PM doesn’t see it as blackmail. For him, it’s just the cost of doing business. Morrison might see this as being flexible, but all it really means that he is completely unprincipled – his only objective is to win the next election. Who cares about policy?
Bonkaby, Drunkaby – just what is that man’s real name?
He would not care what you all him, as long as it is not late to the trough.