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Queensland premier defends coal industry backing, chief justice choice

Premier says: ‘we’re in the coal industry and proudly so’ as past controversies return to dog his final pitches to voters before the Queensland election...

Campbell Newman has reaffirmed his “proud” support for the coal industry and hit back at critics of the chief justice appointment, as his final day of campaigning was sidetracked by controversial issues of the past three years.

The Queensland premier sought to turn the focus back on the opposition leader, Annastacia Palaszczuk, saying her inability to recall the rate of the goods and services tax during a radio quiz on Thursday showed Labor lacked economic credibility.

Palaszczuk made another blunder in a television interview on Friday when she said Queensland’s unemployment rate was 6.6% “on a seasonal trend” – a phrase that appeared to merge the two terms used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The “trend” rate in December was 6.6% and the “seasonally adjusted” rate was 6.1%.

Both leaders were preparing to make their final pitches to voters during a Queensland Media Club luncheon debate in Brisbane, after polls showed statewide support for the Liberal National party and Labor could be as close as 50/50 after preferences, and Newman was on track to lose his own seat of Ashgrove on Saturday.

Newman conducted a series of radio interviews in which he said the result would be “tight” across the state, including in Ashgrove, and asked voters to support the LNP to avoid the “chaos and dysfunction” of a hung parliament.

He declined to say what would happen if the LNP was returned to government but he lost Ashgrove, saying he was convinced the result would be the same in both contests.

In an interview with the ABC, Newman faced a series of questions about his style of leadership and past controversies, including his decision to raise the threshold for donations to be disclosed and his declaration in 2012 that “we are in the coal business”.

Asked whether a vote for the LNP was actually a vote for the coal industry, Newman said: “It’s a vote for mining, agriculture, tourism and construction and other important areas of the economy.”

When the interviewer, Steve Austin, asked whether there was a connection between donations to the LNP and support for coal interests, Newman said “of course not”.

The premier tried to ask his own question of Austin. “I’ll throw it back to you, Steve, do you have a motor car? … The first thing is everyone who drives a motor car should know this: about 800kg of coking coal is required to produce a motor car,” Newman said.

“Modern industrial economies cannot go forward without steel. You cannot make steel without coal unless you want to go back to what happened in pre-industrial Britain and use forests, burn down, cut down trees and create charcoal.

“So that’s why I’ve said that we’re in the coal industry and proudly so. This state relies on royalties and all sorts of other revenue streams that come from active involvement in that very important industry sector which sees thousands of people being employed. That’s why we’re behind the coal industry.”

Labor has vowed not to offer taxpayer funds to support the construction of a railway line from the site of the proposed Adani coalmine in the Galilee basin to the port at Abbot Point, accusing the government of secrecy over how much it was willing to contribute.

Newman said he was disturbed that Labor had “essentially killed the Galilee basin in terms of what they’ve said”.

The premier also defended the approval of the “New Acland stage three expansion”, a coal project which is the subject of defamation action he launched against the broadcaster Alan Jones.

He said the proposal had been scaled back from what was planned in 2011, but declined to say if he had ever visited Jones’s house to discuss the issue.

Newman said critics of the appointment of the former family court judge Tim Carmody as the chief justice in 2014 were “people with political motivations”.

The appointment was criticised by numerous members of the legal profession and current and former judges. In June, Peter Davis QC resigned as the Queensland Bar Association president in protest at the alleged leaking and distortion of private conversations he had with the attorney general, Jarrod Bleijie, and a government staffer as part of consultations in the lead-up to Carmody’s appointment.

The questions over the issue distracted from Newman’s attempt to cast Saturday’s election as a choice between a strong economic plan and an opposition that had failed to outline a comprehensive vision.

Palaszczuk has continued to focus on stopping Newman’s privatisation plan and his abrasive leadership style in her final pitches to voters.

The opposition leader highlighted the high unemployment rate during an interview with ABC TV on Friday and described her attempt to win government as “like climbing Mount Everest”.

“I know the task that I’m up against but we’ve had a really hard-working team,” she said.

“Nine members, it’s a close team, they’ve worked as hard as they possibly can and tomorrow, hopefully, Queenslanders will get their chance to keep our assets and to send Campbell Newman and his arrogant, out-of-touch government a very clear message.”

News Corp’s Courier-Mail front page on Friday focused on Palaszczuk’s performance in a fast-paced radio quiz in which she said “pass” to a question about the GST rate, describing it as a “monumental blunder” that “spectacularly derailed” her economic pitch.

Palaszczuk later played down the issue, saying she knew the rate was 10% but she had done three interviews that morning and had not had a coffee beforehand.

Speaking on 4KQ on Friday, Newman acknowledged that “everyone can make a mistake” but said Palaszczuk’s blunder followed several weeks of campaigning by Labor figures on visits to Queensland accusing the federal Coalition of planning to raise the GST.

“When you make a gaffe about the GST after saying your opponent is trying to put it up, I mean I’m sorry: It’s not because you didn’t have your coffee that morning; I’m sorry, it’s because you don’t have a plan,” he said.

Tony Abbott, who has not visited Queensland to campaign with the LNP during the campaign, said on Friday that Newman deserved to win.

“All the opposition has is a plan for getting into government,” the prime minister said, adapting a line of attack Labor has used against him.

The Greens leader, Christine Milne, confirmed the party’s how-to-vote cards in the majority of seats would recommend people allocate preferences to Labor above the LNP “because we want to see an end to the Campbell Newman government”.

“In the seat of Ashgrove the Greens decided to preference the Labor party to run Campbell Newman out of Ashgrove, out of Queensland,” Milne said on a campaign stop in Brisbane.

“If Campbell Newman goes on a plan B to drive another Liberal out of a safe Liberal seat to get back in he will incur the wrath of Queenslanders.”

Source: The Guardian