A top Liberal party official has given “unambiguous” assurance that a future Turnbull government will not sink public funds into Adani’s Queensland coal mining project, conservation groups have claimed.
Activists opposed to Australia’s largest proposed export coal venture have been pressing the commonwealth on whether its $5bn infrastructure fund will be available to Adani to build a railway that was once in line for a state loan.
But this week, the federal director of the Liberal party, Tony Nutt, wrote to the WWF Australia president, Dermot O’Gorman, to say the government had ruled out funding the Indian conglomerate’s $16bn, 60-year thermal coal project in north Queensland’s Galilee basin.
“The Australian government has already ruled out funding for Adani as any investment is up to the private company to make,” Nutt said.
A spokeswoman for Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), Imogen Zevothen, said conservationists “strongly welcome this commitment from the Liberal party to rule out any public funding for Adani”.
“That should put the nail in the coffin for this project,” she said.
“As far as we’re aware, there hasn’t been such an unambiguous statement before. “That’s why we warmly welcome this very clear statement that there will be no taxpayer funding for this highly damaging project – damaging to the climate and damaging to the reef.”
The messages from the government have been mixed – the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, told an activist last week there was “no public money for Adani”.
But his office later told New Matilda it was still possible the independent board overseeing the $5bn Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) could grant Adani low-interest loans for the railway.
This was in line with the position outlined by the minister for northern Australia, Josh Frydenberg, over the last nine months that while the Carmichael project was “a commercial operation [that] needs to stand on its own feet”, all investment decisions by the NAIF would be made by its board.
Nutt was responding to requests from WWF and AMCS for information to compile a “scorecard” on major party policies around the Great Barrier Reef this election.
Zevothen said this meant “both major parties have now ruled out any public funding for Adani” after a similar commitment from the opposition leader, Bill Shorten.
Adani has most key project approvals in place but has struggled to gain financial backing for the $16bn project amid a coal market slump and what it said were delays caused by legal challenges from activists.
It has argued that the project is crucial to increasing electricity supply to India.
Conservationists say the emissions from burning up to 60m tonnes of coal a year would have a dire impact on efforts to limit global warming.
