The stalling of the Multi Cargo Facility project at Abbot Point has Senator Bob Brown’s fingerprints all over it, according to Federal Member for Dawson, George Christensen.
Mr Christensen accused the Greens of stopping the facility from going ahead during a speech on the Labor Government’s economic mismanagement in parliament this afternoon.
North Queensland Bulk Ports lodged the final environmental impact statements on December 6 last year and were advised a decision would be made by February.
“It is almost a year and the project is going nowhere,” Mr Christensen said.
“This is an absolutely ludicrous situation that this government should not have allowed and now I’m being told by people in the industry that the project has been referred to UNESCO.
“Who is running this country? The Labor Party, who couldn’t care less about business, investment and the economy, or the Greens, who want it all completely shut down?”
Mr Christensen said the State Government had already addressed issues of environmental impact and the project’s proponents had agreed to offset 100 per cent of all perceived environmental damage.
In questioning during senate estimates last month, a federal environment department bureaucrat admitted the final documents were provided to the department on December 6 last year but were still under assessment.
“The proposal is still under assessment," the bureaucrat told the Senate.

"The proponent, North Queensland Bulk Ports, provided a final EIS document to the department on 6 December last year. The department is still considering the content of that document and assessing it with a view to briefing the minister in the near term.”
(Source: Hansard: Tuesday, 18 October 2011)

“That is an extraordinary amount of time to assess a document, which is confirmed by the initial advice that it would take just two months,” Mr Christensen said.
“It looks an awful lot like the Greens are the ones preventing this project."
Mr Christensen said that people didn’t have to look any further than the Greens website to know they were holding the Labor government hostage.
The Greens today announced on their website that the government was going to gag debate on the Carbon Tax in the Senate and bring on an early vote.
Hours later the government publicly announced they were gagging the Senate's carbon tax debate.