No loan for Adani’s Australian mine if Labor comes back to power

Indian mining giant Gautam Adani could find himself struggling for funds for his Australian coal mine if the ruling Labor Party comes back to power in the Queensland state. The election to vote a new state government is due on November 25.

Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had on November 10 announced that Labor Party, should it be voted back to power, would veto the $1 billion federal loan to Adani’s project. Previously, Palaszczuk had been an ardent supporter of the controversial coal mine project.

The surfacing of the role of Palaszczuk’s partner Shaun Drabsch in helping the Adani Group prepare a loan application had been given as the reason behind Palaszczuk’s U-turn. According to Australian media reports, allegations of conflict of interest could have been detrimental to the Premier’s re-election bid.

However, the opposition party in Queensland and the federal government have so far remain committed in providing Adani with the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) loan and in helping the coal mine project get off the ground.

The Adani Group needs the $1 billion loan to build a rail link to the proposed Carmicahel coal mine, $16.5 billion investment dogged by environmental concerns. The Indian business giant has said that the coal mined out of the project would be transported to India.

In a separate poll conducted by Canberra-based public policy think tank Australia Institute, it was found that 61 per cent of Queensland’s voters backed Premier Palaszczuk’s decision to veto the proposed $1 billion loan to Adani. The findings of the survey, conducted by ReachTEL, were published in Guardian Australia.

NewsPoll, an opinion poll conducted by News Corp Australia’s flagship publication The Weekend Australian has predicted that Labor would return to form the government in Queensland, it was reported on Saturday. The survey was conducted across six marginal seats (where the winning candidate won less than 56 per cent of the vote in the two-party preferred system).