Bligh to ignore miners' stance on QR sell-off

Queensland transport minister Rachel Nolan said yesterday there would be no change to the original sale plan.

"The government's view and the government's previous announcements have been that Queensland Rail will be publicly floated at the end of this year with a maximum shareholding to any party of 15% and there is no variation from that position," Ms Nolan said.

She was backed by premier Anna Bligh.

"What you can see from the complaints from coal companies is verification that the Queensland taxpayers have in effect been subsidising their transport arrangements for several decades," Ms Bligh said.

"This will put an end to that."

Ms Bligh said coal companies had their own vertical structures in other states but were seeking to deny a similar advantage to Queensland taxpayers.

Following an industry meeting in Brisbane a few hours later, Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said coal producers were unanimous in their view that the QR coal business privatisation model being pursued by the state government was not in the interests of either the coal industry or Queensland taxpayers.

Sources close to the miners said the vertical integration model, which was also pushed on Sunday by QR chief executive Lance Hockridge (see report), existed nowhere else in Australia and US models he had cited were internally focused and did nothing as far as exporters there were concerned.

They compared the rush to privatise QR with former premier Peter Beattie's sell-off of Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal – one that Mr Beattie said had been flawed because it had not involved the industry it serves.

They also challenged Ms Bligh on her use of the term "subsidising", saying Queensland was the only Australian state where miners paid royalty on rail haulage.

The QRC has brought in Hunter coal system reformer Nick Greiner, whose solution for Newcastle was at variance with the Queensland privatisation model, to chair the meeting.

Asked if the miners could buy the whole of QR and hive off all but the coal chain, one source said such an effort would be "killed off" by the institutional investors.