TODAY Queensland pays the first instalment in the massive cost of returning the Palaszczuk government to power.
As promised part way through the election campaign, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has written to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to veto a $1 billion concessional loan for the Adani mine.
The job destroying rejection of Adani never had anything to do with protecting the reputation of Ms Palaszczuk’s partner Shaun Drabsch, who worked on Adani’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility application.
The rejection of the Adani was always about the Labor camp managing the extreme green vote and ensuring the Palaszczuk administration and targeted MPs including Jackie Trad were returned to power.
However, the stance adopted by Labor is not just the end of the Carmichael coal project and Adani in Australia. It is also puts the skids under the entire Galilee basin coal precinct.
At one time six coal companies were fighting just to build a rail line to Galilee.
Now the last willing investor has been given its his marching orders. With it has gone the opportunity for the vital infrastructure needed to develop the region and create tens of thousands of jobs.
The veto comes despite successive state governments pouring tens of millions of dollars into preparing the way for rivers of revenue from Galilee to underwrite state budgets for decades to come.
Queensland’s budget is maxed out with a $81 billion debt, and that essential revenue stream has now been destroyed.
The consequences for Queensland businesses, including those in agriculture, will be ever increasing taxes and a rapid decline in key regional infrastructure.
That's before we start thinking about vegetation management, electricity and the other green flavoured fetishes of the returned state government.
