LABOR HEARD NOTHING, LEARNT NOTHING FROM ELECTION LOSS

The Labor party has heard nothing and learnt nothing from the federal election result and still won’t back the coal industry.

 

New Labor leader Anthony Albanese and his deputy-in-waiting Richard Marles have both refused to support the Adani project during interviews today.

 

Instead of providing assurances to the people of Queensland about their job security, all Mr Albanese and Mr Marles offered were weasel words.

 

Their answers contained more waffles than a Belgian breakfast café.

 

This is a slap in the face for hundreds of thousands of voters in regional Queensland and elsewhere who support the coal industry and the Adani project in particular.

 

They clearly voted for the Adani project, for the coal industry and for well-paid new jobs but that message is still not getting through to the federal Labor leadership.

 

This afternoon, Mr Albanese couldn’t bring himself to say he supported the Adani project, and instead questioned its economics, the cost-benefit ratio of the project.

 

Why would anyone trust a leader of the Labor left about the economics of mining? And, in any case, why is that at all relevant to government when it is not the government’s money at risk?

 

For all Mr Albanese’s talk of improving relations with business last week, this week he wants to double-guess business decisions.

 

This morning, Mr Marles, asked if the Adani project should go ahead, demonstrated Labor still wants to transition Australia out of the coal business as quick as possible.

 

Mr Marles said it is ‘a difficult question’ the Labor party needs to work through and that, while Labor should value people who work in the industry, ‘Obviously there is … the question of climate change and transitioning our economy away from being a carbon-based economy that’s an important agenda as well and we need to be true to that and in all of that we’ve got to work through this difficult issue and navigate a path forward.’