(Image: Private Media/Tom Red)

Barnaby Joyce has confirmed that the government’s 2050 net-zero commitment will include a plan to subsidise an increase in coal exports, thereby increasing global greenhouse emissions. As part of the price extracted by the Nationals to support net zero by 2050, the government will commit at least $3 billion and likely more to an extension of its inland rail line that will exist only to increase coal exports from the Surat Basin in Queensland.

The government’s own figures show massive investment has no commercial basis, but will provide subsidised carriage of coal to the port of Gladstone — thus subsidising coal exports.

Joyce told ABC Brisbane last night that (as predicted by Crikey) “you can lock it in” when asked about the extension of the disastrous inland rail line to Gladstone — expected to blow out the cost of the project from $15 billion to $20 billion. Bizarrely, the Canberra press gallery, which is obsessively focused on what deal Morrison can engineer with the Nationals over a net zero commitment, completely ignored the announcement.

The cost of the inland rail project from Melbourne to Brisbane has already blown out twice, from $4.9 billion to $10 billion and subsequently $15 billion. Proponents have been pushing to extend the line — which will never make back its construction costs and is unlikely to cover its operating costs — an extra 540 kilometres from Toowoomba to Gladstone, an idea that has received support from both sides of politics.

According to a pre-feasibility study conducted by the Infrastructure Department, the link to Gladstone would cost $5 billion for a coastal route and $3 billion for an inland route, “with the economic impacts of the alignments indicating poor (and highly uncertain) economic returns”. The only beneficiary would be coalminers in the Surat Basin, given neither farmers nor freight haulers would find much use for it.

Indeed, the study suggested that a $1 billion narrow gauge line from Wandoan to Banana to link up to the existing Queensland Rail network might produce a marginal benefit: “This route is intended to unlock coal reserves in the Surat Basin and offer an alternative and more efficient access to export coal markets.”

The current inland rail project, which according to its 2015 business case will lose billions over its life, exists only to provide easier access to ports for coal exporters. Coal will form more than half the entire haulage on the line, which will, in terms of its business case, “be a catalyst for additional coal exports from south-east Queensland to the Port of Brisbane”. With the Gladstone expansion, the line will represent another $3 billion subsidy to coal exporters. Based on the blowout in costs for the existing project, the Gladstone extension may end up costing $9 billion to $12 billion.

Joyce has tried to argue that the inland rail project is a carbon abatement initiative given the number of trucks it will take off the road. However, the Gladstone extension confirms that the entire project is a $20 billion-plus subsidy for coalminers to increase exports, significantly adding to global warming.

The Morrison government’s “net-zero” commitment will thus be reliant on an increase in the carbon emissions.