Coalition backbencher breaks ranks with colleagues over $1bn Adani rail loan

A Coalition backbencher has broken ranks with senior colleagues by declaring Adani should not receive a $1bn federal loan to build a railway for its Carmichael coalmine. Bert Van Manen, MP for the south-east Queensland seat of Forde, said he supported opening up the Galilee coalfields but the government or a rail company should build and run the rail link to port, not the miner. It’s a stance at odds with that put the same day by the acting prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who declared a government loan to Adani was a “great idea” and a “tipping point issue” to get the mine going. Van Manen said the risk of granting a $900m concessional loan to Adani through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility was ending up with a railway other miners in the Galilee could not access on equal terms. “What I don’t want to see is a spaghetti network of rail lines from different mine operators because one dominant one has access to a piece of infrastructure they don’t let anybody else access,” he told Guardian Australia. Van Manen said he would raise the issue with Matt Canavan, the minister responsible for the NAIF, “in due course”. “It’s been a discussion on the margin [of party talks] and we haven’t really sat down and had an in-depth discussion with it across the board but I’ll continue to speak with colleagues about it and I’ll sit down at some point with Matt Canavan,” he said. Van Manen acknowledged the assessment of NAIF loan applications was done by an independent board and he was unsure of the scope for ministerial veto. He was not opposed to a rival bid for NAIF funding to build rail access to the Galilee by the haulage outfit Aurizon. “I think there’s some options out there and I haven’t looked at anybody particularly in terms of whether it’s Aurizon or Australian Rail Track Corporation, I just don’t think it should be the mining company,” he said. Joyce told ABC on Tuesday that the government wanted open access to Adani’s line to allow other miners to use it and turn the Galilee Basin into a “cash cow for Australia”. But Van Manen said he had investigated the matter when it was raised a constituent and he was wary of a repeat of a “spaghetti junction of rail line like we finished up with in the Pilbara [in Western Australia] because each company built their own rail line”. “I think it’s an enormous waste of capital and it just doesn’t benefit everybody,” he said. “If we have one rail system that whoever’s building mines in those areas has access to on an equal basis and they pay for the tonnage that they put over the line and access to it, and everybody has that, that can be their focus, running their mine rather than other things. “I just think it’s a more efficient way of doing it, that’s my view.” Van Manen said he had held this view long before a calling campaign in his electorate by progressive lobby group GetUp, which had prompted some constituent calls to his office. GetUp said it had called 3,766 voters in Forde about the NAIF loan to Adani, spoken to 191 people and found 71% opposed it. GetUp Queensland campaigner Ellen Roberts said the group was “really pleased” that Van Manen had come out opposing the proposed Adani loan, given he was “the first MP who has cut ties with his party’s position”. “Massive corporate handouts are deeply unpopular with the people in Forde … when people are struggling to pay their bills and funding for schools and hospitals is being cut.”