SATURDAY - How woke banks have sabotaged coal projects 💰

0:00News you can trust. Opinions that matter. Now, Ben Fordham comments. A coal boss has just exposed how big banks really work. A senior exec at one of Australia's big four looked at a major coal project, ran the numbers and decided, yep, this looks good, it's going to work, then he wouldn't take it any further. Not because it didn't stack up, but because it was coal. Mining executive Barry Tudor has described what happens when projects go to the big banks. He's the founder of pen broke resources. He spent years developing the Olive Downs project in Queensland, one of the largest new coal mines in Australia. It had demand, it had scale, it had commercial sense. And the banks knew it. Barry says a senior executive at one of the big four told him directly the project would succeed. Barry Tudor has told he's storing in the Australian. He says the bank boss understood it, believed it would succeed, but he also made something else clear.

1:01It simply would not be worth his time explaining it to senior management, because the bank wouldn't want to finance a new coal project. So the bank knew that his head office would not approve a coal deal, so he didn't take the proposal upstairs. Not because the mine wouldn't make money, but because coal didn't suit the bank's politics, and it only gets worse during the Olive Downs development, Barry says his company was blocked from even placing deposits, all because it was linked to coal. And this isn't a one-off, they proposed diesel refinery in Gladstone was denied a bank account, and of course, no bank account, no project. And this is the kind of project that would increase Australia's domestic fuel supply. And it's not just the banks causing trouble. Back in 2021, a major contractor working on the Adani mine couldn't get insurance anywhere. After more than 40 years in business, BMD constructions had never seen anything like it. Without insurance, BMD was in breach of contract.

2:04No cover, no work. And we've seen the same pressure at the infrastructure level too. In 2021, ANZ withdrew from financing the port of Newcastle, the world's largest coal port. It's a critical piece in our export system. By the way, when Australian banks step back from assets like this, the funding doesn't disappear. It moves often offshore. So put all of that together and the patent is pretty clear, projects that make commercial sense, struggle to get backed by Aussie banks. As a result, some move overseas, along with the jobs and investment, all because a bunch of suits in head office want to look green. And it's a great shame because for generations, banks have helped build this country. And they should get back to doing it instead of playing politics.