The Queensland government has raised more questions about the federal government’s decision to rush out its approval of Adani’s groundwater management plan before calling the federal election, with the state’s environment minister saying it “reeked of political interference”.
In a speech to the Queensland parliament on Thursday, Queensland’s environment minister, Leeanne Enoch, said the federal government would need to justify its decision to approve a previous version of the company’s groundwater plan, given Queensland regulators had required significant improvements to the document before signing it off on Thursday.
The new federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, called the remarks “a political line” but suggested the government could be open to looking at the strengthened conditions Queensland had imposed.
In separate comments to Guardian Australia, Enoch said the federal approval of the plan before the election “reeked of political interference”.
Her comments come after considerable political pressure on the Queensland government in recent weeks to grant the final approvals needed for Adani to commence clearing and other preliminary construction work at its Carmichael mine site in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
The company still requires further federal approvals before it can extract any coal.
Enoch said that in April, on the eve of the federal election being called, the federal environment minister approved the groundwater management plan, provided Queensland a copy of the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia report, and Adani submitted an amended version of its groundwater management plan to the Queensland government, all within the space of 30 minutes.
The Queensland environmental regulator then sought additional information from the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia based on that new version, and asked Adani to strengthen it to ensure environmental protections, Enoch said.
“It is interesting that the federal government approved the previous version of the GDEMP without requiring these further strengthened conditions,” she said.
Ley said: “It sounds just like a political line to me because, now that they have given that approval, we would probably look … we may do a similar thing to make life easier for Adani.
“They have got their own process, they are entitled to undertake their own process, and I am not going to be critical of their process. If they want to be critical of ours, I am still not going to comment on it.”
Ley added that it was still up to Adani to comply with all of the conditions set by the Queensland government and those contained in its federal approvals.
She said the Adani approvals process had been unnecessarily lengthy and that issues such as this would need to be examined through the statutory review of Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which is due to commence later this year.
“I think the process has taken too long,” Ley said. “I don’t think anyone would disagree with that and that leads to my views on the EPBC Act and what we need to do in amending it which is due under the act in the second half of this year.
“I don’t think it matters whether you are on the side promoting your development or preserving conservation, all would agree that the process under EPBC is unnecessarily tied up with green tape and unnecessarily lengthy.”
