Indian multi-billionaire Gautam Adani flew into Townsville via Jakarta on Monday and out again on Tuesday in his personal jet.
Obviously the visit has to do with his contentious coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland and just as obviously he did not want Australians to know he was here.
News of Adani’s trip broke at 12am Wednesday morning in the Murdoch press including Brisbane’s Courier-Mail and the Townsville Bulletin (midnight is the classic time for ending a news embargo). Reporter Madura McCormack’s reports say nothing about the reason for the lightning trip aside from “internal meetings”.
Strangely the ABC, which so often follows up stories in the Murdoch media, has run nothing on this one.
After all, Adani’s mine was one of the big issues in both the last Queensland and federal elections. The Stop Adani Convoy, which went to Queensland during the federal election campaign, was a major reason for changing votes across the country. The government was so sensitive about the issue that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was told that the word Adani was poison and never mentioned the mine during his campaign.
In May, just after Morrison won the election, Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk announced she had “had a gutful” of the issue of the Adani mine and, within a month, had ticked off on management plans for the mine to proceed.
Incredibly, for a man so media-shy in Australia, Adani paid for Sky News presenter Peta Credlin to fly to India just a fortnight ago. He got what he paid for: a classic puff piece with no difficult questions and no new information.
So why the secrecy in Townsville yesterday? At the very least, having got the mine go-ahead, Adani’s advisers are hoping that the contention will dissipate if he starves it of oxygen. But some questions linger in the air.
For example, where now are the guarantees of thousands of jobs for locals promised by Adani? Will he stop the mine if it is found to be killing the Doongmabulla Springs oases as independent scientists predict? Or if the endangered black-throated finch is found to be pushed to extinction? Or if the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council wins it’s current court action?
The politicians’ commitments that Adani will get no public money begs another question: why the secrecy of negotiations over royalties?
Will Adani pay for all the agreed and compulsory land acquisitions needed for his 200 kilometre rail link, now being undertaken by the Palaszczuk government? And what of that $3 billion that Adani proposes to transfer from Queensland profits into a family trust in the Cayman Islands?
Informed journalists getting within cooee of Gautam Adani might also have asked how he is going on the home front: with evictions of poorer Indians from both his latest open-cut coal mining venture in central India’s Hasdeo Arand forests and for the proposed thermal power station near the border with Bangladesh. Regarding the latter, how come his friend, PM Narendra Modi, has allowed the power station site to become a “special economic zone” with all the accompanying tax breaks? Why did the displaced citizens not get the same breaks before Adani forced them out?
There is as much to be asked about his secret visit to Australia this week, but if his success in avoiding the media is reassurance that the issue is fizzling, I would advise the great man to think again.
Adani’s opening of the Galilee Basin coal load is clawing at the conscience of many folk who can’t afford Lear jets. This is an age of global climate emergency caused in large measure by burning coal, with half Queensland drought stricken and receiving large Australian taxpayer support, and an estimated 10,000 jobs on the Great Barrier Reef in jeopardy due to coral death. Insurance policies are going up to help pay the $1 billion cost of this year’s Townsville flood, and last year was both the hottest and most greenhouse-gas polluting year in Australia’s history,
When the Galilee coal is burnt, wherever that is, it will more than double the current record greenhouse gas emissions from Australia. Who is culpable for that?
In recent weeks thousands of people worried by inaction on the climate emergency and by the Adani mine have rallied in Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra and other Australian cities.
Secret visits or not, the issue of Adani’s coal mine is far from going away.
Bob Brown is the former leader of the Greens and led the Stop Adani Convoy during the 2019 federal election.
Should Adani front up to the media? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your full name and let us know your thoughts.
I think the “Stop Adani Convoy” was a tactical misfire that delivered votes to minor fringe parties who then fed a Liberal government through preferences.
60 million dollars and targeted facebook lies (Palmer Porkies) telling people there were death taxes etc is what did it.
Stop Adani was not a tactical misfire. Silly to blame the convoy. Thank you Bob Brown for continuing to call the public’s attention to the environmental travesty that the Galilee Basin will become if even one of the planned coal mines goes ahead.
I agree with fletch – much as I admire Brown – I think that stunt was an overreach that galvanised the vote the wrong way, in electorates already poorly disposed to conservation(ists) and looking for someone to blame for their circumstances.
Driving them and their votes to the arms of false “profits”.
In my experience, FIFO organising is no substitute for community organising.
Hardly. The Greens convoy was to campaign for the Greens and their vote increased in QLD. It’s arguable, though debatable, that it didn’t help the ALP but that’s not the Green’s problem. Perhaps if the ALP had got the same advice as the LNP and said less or nothing about Adani it would have worked out better for them.
Crooked Clive’s campaign would seem to be a big factor. How people could vote for him at all amazes me given his total lack of actual policy or appeal. How they could do so after he screwed all those nickel plant workers in QLD reflects poorly on those voters.
Greens have more power working with a minority Labor government than a majority Liberal Coalition.
The goal of Greens isn’t votes, it’s policy influence and they’ve neutered themselves imo.
One suspects that apart from those living north of the Sunshine Coast divide, Adani’s visit to Oz would have been even less welcome than that of Milo Yiannopoulos. Will Mr Adani ever show his face in Brisbane, for example, where the fantasy of thousands of Carmichael jobs is risible.
Gautam Adani, will make himself scarce and disappear into India and Singapore, once the Carmichael mine is up and running.
The Queensland Government, long accused of delaying the desperately needed cascade of jobs ranging in numbers from the 10,000’s to the 1,000’s and now cruising around the less than 100 for the fully automated mine.
The only hold up for this mining catastrophe now, is the High Court order for the Federal Government to re-do the permissions and considerations regarding the unlimited water allowance from the Artesian Basin.
In the meantime, the crowing federally elected politicians, who all received an increase in their vote, thanks to either Pauline or Clive, are beginning to smell the “S..t Sandwich”, served by the Queensland Government, that they are going to have to eat for pushing Adani’s mine so hard and fast, with promises rolling off their tongues of jobs and more jobs with this project or that.
Cold hard reality is hitting, the population is still a little, or a lot, in denial of what has been obvious to the disinterested observer for years. The desperation of an unemployed population rises with the understanding that THERE ARE NO JOBS in this mine and no run offs, at the pubs, shops anywhere else.
The footage of the current leader of the Opposition in Queensland, Deb Frecklington, who shrugged and said “I’ve seen those birds they are talking about in the pet shop, $40 they were”, perhaps she needs to report their whereabouts to NPWS, because the sale of an endangered species comes with huge fines and possible jail time.
Go Bob! The Adani coal mine must be stopped. After taking part in the Bob Brown Foundation Convoy to Stop Adani, I have resolved that some of my time, energy, and resources, will be devoted to climate change activism, for the rest of my life. Especially when that activism is led by people of integrity, wisdom, and courage, like Bob.
With you Angela.
Yes, Bob Brown’s ego-convoy. The natives noticed.
“The Stop Adani Convoy, which went to Queensland during the federal election campaign, was a major reason for changing votes across the country. ”
Morrison and Adani are perceived to have won the election because of it. Well done, Bob.
Not true. How on earth can you overlook Palmer’s 60 million dollar campaign much of which was run through targeted facebook adverts spreading lies like ‘death taxes’ etc.
By blaming the Greens, you overlook the greatest threat our democracy has faced- the facebook (funded by Palmer in Australia) election factor. It delivered Trump, Brexit and Morrison. Three dodgy ‘miracles’ that stink to high heaven….
Someone needs to point out that John Howard introduced a tax on any voluntary superannuation contributions made at the concessional tax level of 15%. When death occurs, then, the contributions are taxed, currently at 15% before the residual is handed over as an inheritance.
Maybe, the memes were right, perhaps Scotty and Josh will need more money to give as tax breaks for their mates and our hard earned superannuation nest eggs are in their plans.