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Mining moguls key backers of Newman

SOME of Queensland’s most outspoken mining leaders – including Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart – made financial contributions totalling $2 million to Campbell Newman’s successful Liberal National party campaign, according to the party’s declaration to the state electoral commission.

Lou Caruana
Mining moguls key backers of Newman

Palmer’s Mineralogy group gave a $66,000 sponsorship to the party while Rinehart’s Hancock Coal paid $6050 to be involved in the LNP corporate observers program.

Leighton Contractors was also involved in the corporate observers program, contributing $11,000. AGL, which has significant coal seam gas interests in Queensland, made a $11,000 sponsorship contribution.

Palmer caused a media frenzy last month after alleging the Central Intelligence Agency is funding a $6 million Greenpeace campaign aimed at disrupting the Australian coal boom.

One of the key objectives of the plan is to halt the development of coal activity in Queensland’s emerging Galilee Basin, he alleged.

The Galilee Basin is the planned location of Palmer’s proposed $8.8 billion China First project, which alone could generate 6000 jobs during construction and lift the state’s coal exports by 40 million tonnes.

Palmer urged Australia’s political leaders to publicly condemn the “cynical blueprint that treats our legal processes with contempt and our citizens as fools.”

After the landslide election result, Queensland’s peak industry body for the minerals and energy sector welcomed newly elected Premier Newman’s overhaul of government departments.

Queensland Resources Council chief executive said the Newman government had “clearly listened to the resource sector’s call to replace unwieldy super-departments with departments focussed on outcomes, not process”

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