Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Carmichael coalmine proposed by the Adani Group is a triple-bottom-line dud. It's a financial dud, it's a social dud and it's an environmental dud, and it's proposed by a company which has an appalling track record, particularly socially and environmentally.

The Adani Group and its cheerleaders in the Australian government initially promised up to 10,000 jobs would be created by the Carmichael coalmine. But the Adani Group was forced to admit later in court that in fact it would actually be fewer than 1,500 jobs. This figure too was later downgraded in the Senate by Senator McKenzie, who qualified that the 1,468 jobs only applied to the construction phase of the project and that ongoing there would only be around 100 jobs. So it would be 100 jobs for a massive carbon bomb that does not have the support of the traditional owners of the land for which it is proposed and which, if it does proceed, will be developed by a company that uses dodgy tax havens in the Cayman Islands to hide its assets and revenue.

The Adani Group has a truly woeful record on human rights. A power station is being constructed by the Adani Group in India near the town of Godda. This is where it is intended that most of the Carmichael coal will be transported to and burnt. In March 2017, as part of the Indian government's approvals process for the power station, a public meeting was organised. At this so-called public meeting, Adani officials were required to hear claims relating to the environmental damage that its project might cause, including the degradation of domestic water supplies for local communities, and to present this information in its environmental impact assessment.

The Adani Group has already drained and polluted local groundwater through industrial bores, and local villagers have said that further impacts on their water could determine whether they can in fact stay in their villages or are forced to leave the region and abandon their way of life to find labour work in the cities. However, according to local Adivasi villagers, Adani officials and a large contingent of police forcibly prevented local dissenters from attending the meeting. Those people were only admitted as proceedings were being officially adjourned.

But it wasn't just people's democratic rights that took a hit that day; it was their bodies and their children's bodies, with reports of men, women and children being charged down and assaulted by the police with batons and bricks. As a result, when environmental approval was granted for the project, no mention was made of the exclusion of landowners, the premature adjournment of the meeting or indeed any local opposition to the project. And although these arrests were formally reported to police, no-one was ever arrested for these crimes.

This is the corrupt, bullyboy company that the Australian government has jumped into bed with—and, for that matter, that the Queensland government has jumped into bed with. This is the company that the Australian and Queensland governments want to sell our environment-destroying coal to. It is this company whose pockets the Australian and Queensland governments want to line by using Australian taxpayers' money.

Proponents of the Carmichael coalmine, including the Commonwealth government, also use the red-herring argument that the Carmichael coalmine will create jobs in poor regions of India, like Godda, and improve the living conditions of all Indians by providing them with cheap coal-fired power. What they don't tell you is that the electricity generated by the dirty coal power station in Godda will actually be sold to Bangladesh. It will provide the local indigenous villages with nothing at all—no benefits in return for their lands, their culture and the violence that's been perpetrated against them. What the government won't tell you is that Adani will be profiting from Bangladeshi power tariffs, ultimately paid for by Bangladeshi people, when they could instead provide solar power for consumption in India for just 40 per cent of the cost of coal power. Who else would Australia be sharing the Adani bed with? The bagmen for the Myanmar military, the Myanmar Economic Corporation—the same military responsible for the genocide of the Rohingya people, thousands of whom have now fled to Australia.

The United Nations has recommended that no business should enter into an economic relationship with Myanmar's armed forces or any enterprise they control. According to Australian human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti, who investigated the Rohingya genocide for the UN, through Adani Australian coal will be helping to fund the operations of the Tatmadaw, the armed forces, and enriching the generals in Myanmar. The UN report Mr Sidoti co-authored for the UN said it found conclusive evidence that the actions of the country's armed forces undoubtedly amounted to the gravest crimes under international law against the Rohingya people.

Now I move to the planet—our climate and our environment. The Carmichael coalmine will see increased shipping traffic through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. As a direct threat to the Great Barrier Reef this will significantly increase the chances of a ship grounding, which would be an ecological disaster for this unique and fragile marine ecosystem. Adani has been responsible for countless environmental breaches in India, including the sinking of the unseaworthy MV Rak off Mumbai which at that time was carrying 60,000 tonnes of coal. Indirectly, the mining, movement and burning of coal from the Carmichael coalmine will affect the Great Barrier Reef by significantly contributing to global temperature rise, which obviously will lead to more coral bleaching. I remind senators that 50 per cent of the coral cover of the Great Barrier Reef is now dead after three severe bleaching events in the last five years.

The Adani Group, through a joint venture with Wilmar, is also a major refiner and trader in palm oil—an industry responsible for devastating huge areas of rainforest, particularly in South-East Asia. This includes the development of a major port in Myanmar leasing land from the Myanmar Economic Corporation—as I said, the financial front for the brutal Myanmar armed forces.

India is the world's biggest consumer of palm oil, outstripping even China and the European Union. Adani Wilmar's palm oil operations have also been found to violate the human rights of people who live in the local affected areas, including the dispossession of indigenous peoples and forced labour. The Adani Group is also responsible for strip mining large tracts of biodiverse forest, including elephant habitat, and destroying waterways and fisheries.

The Adani Group has benefited from human rights violations and environmental degradation associated with many of its commercial operations. Some of the abuses have been carried out by governments acting for the benefit of the Adani Group, and the Australian government is one of them. That the Australian government is in bed with the Adani Group while this parliament considers Magnitsky-style laws to impose sanctions on people who commit human rights abuses would be funny if it wasn't so devastatingly sad. By its actions, both in Australia and around the world, the Adani Group has forfeited any claims to a social licence to operate in Australia and it is time they were sent packing from this country.

Incredibly importantly, we all know—or should know—is the role coal is playing in cooking our planet. It is completely unconscionable for any government to even consider allowing such a devastating project as the Carmichael coalmine, proposed by such a dodgy, serial lawbreaking company as the Adani Group, to proceed here in Australia or anywhere else in the world. It is time that we prevented this carbon bomb from exploding, and it is beyond time that the truth about the Adani Group's track record was placed on the record and made public.