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The Australia Institute <mail@tai.org.au>

12:03 PM (1 hour ago)

to me
The Australia Institute

Dear Neville —
Premier Palaszczuk delivered her government’s first state budget this week. Our Research Director Rod Campbell was in the lockup to get the low down.

First the good news: the Palaszczuk Government has edged away from the last government’s promise to bankroll the construction of coal railways to the Galilee Basin (an estimated $455 million) and to fund major dredging of the Abbot Point coal port (estimated upwards of $1 billion) next to the Great Barrier Reef.

Better still, modest increases in health and education spending mean that Queensland’s dreadful record on per capita funding of vital services will improve. Queensland is amongst Australia’s lowest spending states on schools, hospitals and community services.

Now, the bad news: the Queensland state handouts to the fossil fuel industry continue, including:

  • $100 million dollars to expand the coal terminal at Gladstone.
  • Around $150 million benefit from cheap access to rail and port facilities
  • $14 million “to continue port planning and development initiatives to meet industry requirements for coal export facilities.”

What does this mean? While the huge subsidies of the Newman era have been reduced, the Queensland Government is still spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money subsidising the coal industry.

This Budget was an opportunity to draw a line in the sand. They missed it.

Tell Premier Palaszczuk: $8 billion in taxpayer-funded handouts for coal companies over the last 6 years is enough. It’s time to end coal handouts.

With the help of hundreds of supporters chipping in, we teamed up with The Explainers to create this short video, based on our research:

thumbnail: Let's back QLD not coal companies
Thanks for backing research that matters,

The Australia Institute Team

P.S. To put things in context, last year the State Government made about the same amount of revenue from vehicle rego as they did from coal royalties. Tell the Premier it makes more sense to spend Queensland’s money on Queensland’s people, not coal companies.

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