This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Queensland government is poised to declare Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal project “critical infrastructure”, a rare step that will elevate its status to an operation that is “essential to [the] state’s economic and community wellbeing”.

The Palazsczuk government appears to be bolstering its visible signs of support for the controversial and stalling coal export project. The state mines minister, Anthony Lynham, is reportedly due to accord it the highest priority development status on Monday.

Last invoked by the government to speed up the delivery of a new public water grid in a drought in 2008, the powers will give newfound importance to decisions around the project by the government’s top bureaucrat, the coordinator general, whose rulings cannot be challenged in court.

Carmichael coal mine: politics, activism and the search for truth | Lenore Taylor Read more

It gives the mine, rail and port initiative the same weight in development terms as hospitals, power stations and telecommunications hubs that are deemed worthy of special protection in the event of terrorists attacks.

Lynham told the Sunday Mail: “This is a critical project. The government is serious about seeing it happen. We have to get jobs happening for central and northern Queensland.”

“We can see the end of the tunnel and now we are accelerating towards it.’’

He said in a statement on Sunday that the only key approvals at the state level yet to be secured by Adani were water licences, on which the company was “actively working” with the Department of Natural Resources and Mines.



Adani has indicated it wants to begin construction on the $16bn mine, rail and port project next year, after staring down a string of legal challenges in court by conservation groups and traditional owners.

It comes after the federal resources minister, Matt Canavan, flagged his keenness to revive a push to change federal environment protection laws to restrict legal challenges by conservation groups, some of which remain ongoing.

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, last week said no one should doubt her government’s resolve to see the Galilee basin developed for coal exports.

Palazczuk said the government was investing in the land court to speed up the outcome of legal challenges to mining proposals by conservationists.

The One Nation senator for Queensland and former coalminer, Malcolm Roberts, said it was “time to stop cheap words and for the premier introduce legislation to start the mine”.

“Jobs have been lost because of Labor inaction on the Adani mine, so Labor’s reaction is to hire more lawyers and let the Greens continue to hold these mines up in green tape,” Roberts said.

The “critical infrastructure” declaration empowers the coordinator general to set deadlines on decisions by state agencies, government-owned corporations and councils around the project or else take over those decisions – and make rulings impervious to legal challenge.

It is understood the declaration, which also enables existing public utility corridors to be set aside for “critical infrastructure easements”, applies to the rail and port sections of the project.

It remains to be seen whether such a move will in fact give way to Adani fast-tracking its development, with some coal industry analysts still sceptical of the Indian parent company’s ability to gain full financial backing given its high debt and a soft coal export market.

Climate change advocacy groups have argued Carmichael and other proposed mines in central Queensland’s Galilee basin are compelling examples of undeveloped fossil fuel reserves that must stay in the ground if the world is to limit global warming to below 2C.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report has claimed four years of “legal delays” of the Adani project had cost the Queensland economy $3.9bn and 2,665 jobs, with another year of delays to cost $1.2bn extra.

But its projections were based on an original promise of 10,000 jobs, a figure which was discredited in land court evidence from Adani’s own economics expert, who ventured a total of 1,464 net jobs from the mine.

Galilee basin coal must be left in ground as a ‘priority’ – new report Read more

The Queensland Resources Council’s outgoing chief executive, Michael Roche, told the Sunday Mail, the declaration of critical status was “another positive sign” the government wanted to see the Adani project to materialise.

But Roche complained that new mine water licensing laws separately proposed by the government to apply to Carmichael could “give the activists a whole new avenue to appeal through the courts”.

Critical infrastructure – ranging across energy, water, transport, communications and health sectors – broadly refers to “the infrastructure that provides goods and services essential to our state’s economic and community wellbeing”, according to the state government website.