Climate change was supposed to have won the Labor Party the Australian election. But yesterday, after having been routed by voters, its panicked leaders backed the mining of a coalfield bigger than the UK.
Fearing a wipeout in state elections next year amid a rise in pro-coal workers and a rebellion against its plans to halve Australia’s carbon emissions, the Labor state government in Queensland accelerated its decision on 105,000 square miles of coal-rich outback land known as the Galilee Basin.
It came days after the party lost what was dubbed the “climate election” to the incumbent centre-right, pro-coal government of Scott Morrison, suffering the most damage — with swings of up to 20 per cent — in the coal country of central Queensland
