Adani coalmine: most Queenslanders want water licence revoked, poll finds

Exclusive: Half of LNP voters and three-quarters of One Nation supporters want water preserved for farmers

Queenslanders overwhelmingly want the state government to cancel the Adani mining company’s 60-year unlimited water extraction licence amid growing concern about the severity of the drought.

Polling conducted by ReachTel for the environmental group Lock the Gate shows concern about water extraction by Adani, and the impact on agriculture, is strong among conservative voters.

Almost 70% of all voters agreed the licence, to extract groundwater for the Carmichael coalmine, should be revoked to safeguard water for farmers.

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Half of Liberal National party voters and three in four One Nation voters also agreed. The polling was conducted on 6 September.

The national coordinator of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Carmel Flint, said the results showed “incredible support across the political spectrum to put water above mining and look after Queensland farmers”.

“I think this really does reveal that as this drought really bites, people don’t accept that we can hand over vast quantities of water to Adani,” she said. “The Coalition treats their constituents with a large amount of contempt over mining, they’ve chosen mining over agriculture and the community is realising the double standards that are at play.”

Flint said the strength of the result could mean environmental groups now pivot to put a greater focus on water issues related to the Carmichael mine.

“Certainly we’ve always been focused on water as being a key issue but [the poll] means we redouble our efforts and certainly we’re going to be looking very hard at [regulatory] decisions and the legal issues.”

As of last week, 58% of Queensland was drought declared.

Adani was granted the water extraction licence by the Queensland government in 2017. It allows the mining company to take water from the Betts Creek formation until 2077.

At the time, Queensland’s natural resources and mines minister, Anthony Lynham, defended the licence and said more than 100 of the 270 conditions on the project applied to groundwater.

He said the licences provided Adani with about 1% of what farmers were able to use in the Burdekin catchment, and that Adani had to pay about three times what farmers did to use surface water.

Last week the federal government ruled the Indian company would not have to complete a full environmental impact statement for its application to drastically expand a dam and build a pipeline from the Suttor River to its Carmichael coalmine.

Flint said these decisions amounted to “special deals” and that the decisions were “completely at odds with what the community expects”.

The federal and state government are both investigating claims Adani drilled illegal groundwater bores at the mine site.

Adani has said the bores are within its permits and were for monitoring and geological assessment work only.

A spokeswoman said Adani “welcomed any investigation from the regulator, which will demonstrate we have conducted stage 1 project activities permitted under Adani Mining’s environmental authority for the Carmichael mine project.”

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As water concerns become more prominent in the battle to stop the coalmine, Adani has made some small but significant steps towards establishing Carmichael in recent months.

Last week it submitted a conceptual operating plan to rail company Aurizon.

Adani has drastically cut the cost of its rail plan, scrapping a proposal to build a line to the Abbot Point port near Bowen, and is instead seeking to link Carmichael to the existing Aurizon network.

The company also wants to slim down its Abbot Point coal terminal expansion to “delay significant capital expense”.

Those recent moves to cut costs and potentially hasten production in the Galilee Basin have prompted activists to ramp up.

Stop Adani groups on Sunday launched a “Stop Aurizon” website and say they will now target the rail operator with protests, including attempting to halt coal trains.

“Aurizon has a clear choice – change your business model or we will break it,” Galilee Blockade group leader Ben Pennings told the Brisbane Sunday Mail.