Adani CEO Jeyakumar Janakaraj said the company would work with any government to develop the mine.

“The result of the Queensland election does not influence the company’s financial decision-making,” Janakaraj said yesterday after Premier Campbell Newman lost his seat and declared his political career over, and counting remained in five seats to determine if Labor could win majority government.

“The company will work with every partner and every government in ensuring these important projects proceed.”

He said Adani’s decision to proceed with the investment had been determined on the cost basis of the project.

“Importantly, the mine at Carmichael ... will be within the first quartile of the cost curve,” he said.

Activists meanwhile are pinning their hopes on the ALP’s promises around the Great Barrier Reef and the wider resources sector.

Tim Buckley – co-founder and managing director of Arkx Investment Management which specialises in investing in clean energy companies and director of green lobby group Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis – said the ALP has committed to remove state subsidies for the Galilee coal and associated rail projects, banning Reef dumping and to ensure no dredging is undertaken at Abbot Point prior to financial close on any project.

“This election result will return the focus of Adani’s $15 billion Carmichael coal mine plus associated rail and port infrastructure proposal to the key questions of financial viability and strategic logic in the face of the structural decline of seaborne thermal coal markets,” Buckley said.

He noted that central to the ALP’s “Saving the Great Barrier Reef” policy, the Queensland Labor Party has committed to:

• Ban the sea dumping of capital dredge spoil within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area
• Labor does not support … plan to dump dredge spoil from Abbot Point onto the Caley Valley Wetlands
• We will ensure that dredging does not go ahead until Adani has demonstrated its project has financial close
• The stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef necessitates that we have a comprehensive climate change policy
• Repeal the Newman government’s water laws
• Labor will not spend taxpayer money to build a private rail line for a private commercial project. …. Labor will not do any secret deals.

If all this came true, Buckley said Labor’s policies would see the removal of numerous taxpayer funded subsidies as diverse as buying dredge spoil, co-funding a foreign billionaire owned private rail line, allocating free water permits and funding a new single purpose water channels for 200km to the Carmichael proposal.

“The commercial viability of Adani’s Carmichael proposal without this government support is highly questionable,” Buckley said. “At the least the port project will not be allowed to commence until financial close, currently not scheduled until the end of 2015.

“The proposal to open up the Galilee coal basin for up to nine new mega-coal projects would see up to 300 million tonnes per annum of additional thermal coal exports.

“The 60% decline in coal prices over the last four years reflects significant oversupply and weaker than expected demand. Flooding the seaborne coal market with a further 30% increase in global supply is against Australia’s national interests.”