Carmichael mine to be given 'essential' status in sign of Palaszczuk support

 The Galilee basin in central Queensland, where Adani
 is seeking to develop the Carmichael coalmine. 

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.

Read The Guardian story - “Carmichael mine to be given 'essential' status in sign of Palaszczuk support.”

(The only thing “critical” about the Carmichael mine is that the coal, which is its reason, should stay in the ground. Climate scientists and others of their ilk from around the world have repeatedly explained that the world’s carbon budget - the maximum amount of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere while keeping a reasonable chance of staying below a given temperature rise and the Paris agreement of December last year is not to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – is close to being exhausted and rather than digging up fossil fuels, we should be developing energy alternatives ensuring that the only criticalness about the Carmichael was that it did not go ahead. Clearly, the Queensland Government, responding to populist ideas and values, conveniently misunderstands “critical” and “essential” – Robert McLean)