It's the fight that has become a proxy war between forces for and
against the coal industry in Australia and it's entering its fiercest
round.
Indian conglomerate Adani's plans to build Australia's
biggest coal mine have been heralded by the federal and Queensland
governments as a boon for local jobs and the economy.
But environmentalists are adamant the mine is a ticking time bomb
that may imperil the Galilee Basin and Great Barrier Reef, as well as
serving as an up-yours to the Paris climate change accord.
The
battle will escalate this week when its opponents launch a campaign
targeting 13 marginal federal Coalition seats and at least three
Queensland state seats.
This comes as new details emerge about Adani's chequered history in
India, where the conglomerate and its subsidiaries have come under fire
from environmental courts.
The $22 billion mega mine Adani plans to build in Carmichael,
Queensland will have six open-cut pits and several underground mines.
Coal will be extracted from the mine site west of Rockhampton and
transported 400 kilometres by rail to the Abbot Point Terminal, south of
Townsville.
It will be processed offshore, before being shipped
to energy-hungry India. The federal government is considering granting
Adani a $1 billion concessional loan to help build the railway line to
the Abbot Point Terminal but the mine's opponents consider the loan a
key battleground in the war against the coal project.
Killing the mine
The anti-mine campaign is no empty threat. It has a $1 million war
chest, nine full-time staff including polling and social media experts,
hundreds of volunteers and is being run by left-leaning activist group
GetUp.
While the anti-Adani movement wants to ensure the firm
isn't granted the $1 billion loan, its end game is to kill off the
project.
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| The Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate
Coalition and 350.org rally in Melbourne against the coal mine. Photo: Wayne Taylor |
"We will win," says businessman turned environmental crusader Geoff Cousins.
This
week, the Australian Conservation Foundation, a host of NGOs and GetUp
will launch a campaign targeting 13 marginal coalition seats in
Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
 |
| Abbot Point is surrounded by wetlands and coral reefs. |
The campaign will employ cutting-edge and traditional tactics. Voters
will be contacted by telephone, advertising and a social media blitz.
GetUp's campaigning is said to have contributed to the loss of several
coalition seats during the 2016 election and the group is hoping to
force Resources Minister Matt Canavan to ditch the proposed $1 billion
concessional loan.
"We're aiming to make 50,000 calls into these
seats over the next three months, and have conversations with at least
the number of people that is equal to that MP's margin in votes. For
example it would take just 532 votes to change the outcome of the seat
of Forde in Queensland," says GetUp's Miriam Lyons.
 |
| Adani's proposed mine and rail lines. |
The mine opponents will also lobby Westpac bank to join a host of
other financial institutions in ruling out funding the $22 billion
project, while continuing to use the courts to frustrate the government
and Adani's ambitions.
Adani believes it has become a proxy for
the nation's coal industry in a campaign that has seen calls from one
environmental group to get activists to infiltrate the firm by posing as
job seekers.
"This is the most regulated project in the history
of Australia and we are yet to push a shovel in the ground and get one
ounce of coal. If they kill us, they will move on to other companies,"
an Adani insider says.
The political pay-off
In cities such as Townsville, heaving with Australian soldiers, and
the sweltering, sprawling country town of Rockhampton, the mine is
mostly seen as a godsend.
"I have come under fire from those
opposed to coal for my vocal support of this project, but I won't take a
backward step," Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow recently said.
The
Queensland Labor government faces an election in 2018 and, short on
major infrastructure projects, hopes the mine and resulting jobs will
see it returned to office.
Adani and the Queensland government say
the project will deliver an employment bonanza, creating thousands of
jobs during the construction phase. This will level off to 1500 or so
employees when the mine is fully operational.
Pauline Hanson has
backed the mine, subject to assurances around water management and the
use of foreign labour, while local LNP member George Christensen
supports both the mine and the subsidy.
The Minerals Council of
Australia's CEO Brendan Pearson says the anti-mine campaign amounts to
"futile grandstanding" that will only delay job and business
opportunities for thousands of Australians.
"It is patently clear
that the Adani mine will proceed and that is a good thing for regional
communities in Central and Northern Queensland," he said.
Federal LNP members are also barracking for the mine.
One
senior federal minister told Fairfax Media that regardless of
opposition by "zealots", the Carmichael coal project is likely to
receive the $1 billion concessional loan from the government.
But
the minister also privately acknowledges that subsidising a firm
controlled by a controversial Indian billionaire is not without its
problems.
A grubby past
The Adani Group is a diversified conglomerate headed by billionaire
Gautam Adani, one of India's wealthiest magnates and a man who has
cultivated powerful friends, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mr Adani recently met Malcolm Turnbull, whose renewed support for coal (
Treasurer Scott Morrison brandished a lump of coal in federal parliament last week)
is at the heart of the Coalition's claim that Labor's renewable energy
policy will lead to a surge in power prices and imperil energy security.
The
power and reach of the Adani Group is legendary in India. But the
group's subsidiaries have also faced allegations of involvement in fraud
and corruption, environmental destruction and labour exploitation.
A
recent ABC investigation into the conglomerate focused on ongoing
investigations by Indian authorities, widely reported by the local
media, into alleged money laundering and tax fraud by Adani
subsidiaries.
The federal resources minister described the ABC report as 'fake news' and said the allegations were untested.
But official Indian tribunals and watchdogs have landed punches on a number of Adani firms, including:
- an August 2016 finding previously unreported in Australia by
the Indian National Green Tribunal- an environmental court- which found
Adani partly responsible for failing to clean up after an oil and coal
spill caused by an unseaworthy ship that ran aground off the coast of
Mumbai in 2011. The ship had been chartered by Adani and was carrying
the firm's coal and fuel; and
- in January 2016, the same tribunal fined an Adani subsidiary
$4.8 million after finding it had caused environmental destruction while
undertaking works at a fishing village in the Indian port city of
Surat.
A report released by lawyers from Environmental Justice
Australia documents these and other alleged Adani misdeeds in India,
including an illegal iron ore mining and export operation and an
environmental disaster at the Mundra port.
Mr Canavan believes Adani has "been exposed to unfair scrutiny" and criticisms of the firm carry "xenophobic undertones."
"There
have been some high-profile incidents by Australian mining and
resources companies recently, some instances that are quite dire. But it
seems to be, because they [Adani] are Indian or because they want to
develop a new coal basin, they are exposed to a different standard."
Mr
Canavan insists Australia has the regulatory checks and balances to
keep Adani in line. For example, there are dozens of criteria for Adani
to meet in order to meet and maintain its government approval.
And
for all the doomsday warnings about Adani coal ships navigating the
Great Barrier Reef, a company insider says such predictions overlook the
fact that other vessels carrying the quarry of other big miners have
for years been making a similar journey to little, if any, protest.
Queensland
has exported more than 200 million tonnes of coal per year in recent
times (more than triple the volume Adani plans to export) and the
majority of that goes through the reef.
But a businessman who
knows how corporate Australia operates, former Optus CEO, Geoff Cousins,
is dismissive of the protections proffered by the federal government
and Adani. Mr Cousins, a former adviser to prime minister John Howard
and current Australian Conservation Foundation chairman, notes that
"major projects get a wide variety of conditions attached to them and
state and federal governments hide behind those conditions. But when
you go to see if anyone checked on those conditions or whether they were
met, the record is generally appalling."
Where will the coal go
The coal Adani wants to mine is bound for India's power plants,
including those the company owns. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
championing renewable energy in line with the aims of last year's Paris
Agreement (looking increasingly shaky in the wake of Donald
Tump's election. At the same time, India is also seeking to ramp up its
own coal production in line with its ambitious aim to become self
sufficient in its production of coal.
The mine's proponents say
if India's power stations are denied Australian coal, they will be
forced to use a dirtier local alternative, with greater emissions. This
claim addresses the argument that the burning of Carmichael coal will
undermine efforts to combat climate change. As with most claims
connected to the mine, this is fiercely contested, including by the
progressive Australia Institute, who argue the Galilee Basin's coal is
dirtier than that in other Australian mines. They also contest the
mine's trumpeted job figures.
Ultimately, the fight about Adani's
Carmichael project is about the wisdom of building a massive new coal
mine as the world moves towards less polluting sources of energy. The
issue of climate change is the ultimate political fault line on which
environmentalists believe the fight against Adani must be waged.
Mr
Canavan says it's all about jobs and economic opportunity. And while
the competing battlegrounds aren't mutually exclusive, there will only
be one victor.
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