Labor cowboys threaten our India ties over Adani mine

Adani is a huge Indian investment in Australia and its failure would send a powerful message. Picture: Hollie Adams

If the Labor Party, state and federal, destroys the Adani mine in Queensland, it will not only hurt our economy, and result in fewer jobs, less wealth and less prosperity for Australia, it will also strike a hammer blow against our position in Asia, especially our critically important relationship with India.

The Adani mine has huge economic and geostrategic ­importance. The latter has barely registered.

Opposition defence spokesman Richard Marles has the makings of a great defence minister. He has a clear strategic map in his head, a studious ­devotion to the area and a good sense of priorities.

However, his remarks about the death of thermal coal were as close to barking mad as you could imagine from a senior politician.

The price of thermal coal is down a bit, though it’s absurd to suggest it has collapsed.

It goes up and down for many different reasons. Around the world, coal has never provided more energy than it does now, though its proportion of global energy is declining.

The International Energy Agency says that there are 202 new coal-fired power stations under construction around the world and a further 206 planned. These figures are not precise, nor are they broadly wrong.

The Morrison government quotes the IEA as estimating that in the first 40 years of the 21st century, the world will use more coal than in the entire pre-2000 industrial age.

The countries where the greatest numbers of new coal-fired power stations will be built are China, India, Indonesia and Japan. You might like or dislike this. But the idea that coal is finished is nuts.

It is telling that the biggest ­increase in new coal-fired power stations is in Asia. Every element of progressive politics argues that we should be closer to Asia. Yet coal is going gangbusters in China and India.

As usual, most of those who loudly insist we should get closer to Asia in principle can’t bear to do so in practice. Theirs is an Asia of the mind, not the Asia of Asia.

Which brings us to Adani and the immense strategic significance of India. It’s the world’s fastest-growing large economy. With Japan, it is the natural Asian balancer of China. It is the world’s biggest democracy. It is a culture of genius and hi-tech innovation at the edge of global capability. It is a transcontinental power. It is the dominant Indian Ocean power.

It is one half of one of the world’s most dangerous potential nuclear flashpoints — with Pakistan; and one half of another ­potential nuclear flashpoint — with China.

At a time when the prestige of democracy is perilously low and somewhat in retreat in the broad East Asian hemisphere, it is one Asian culture that has somehow implanted democracy into the very DNA of its nation.

Labor claims to be better at Asian diplomacy than the ­Coalition. I think the two sides of politics have comparable records. But on India, Labor’s record is abysmal, and has seriously hurt our national interests. At least twice, Labor has completely kicked off course the Australia-India relationship, and it is in the process of doing so a third time by the way it is impeding Adani and licensing the Greens and GetUp and all the other reactionary, Left forces that in effect hate our civilisation and want to destroy everything that makes it wealthy.

Towards the end of his time in office, John Howard reversed Australia’s previous policy of refusing to sell uranium to India. The then Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had, through an interview with The Australian, asked him to do so.

It was long overdue and the Liberals deserve their own share of criticism for being so slow to recognise India’s importance. But it was a huge move by Howard, of immense importance to New Delhi.

Then, as soon as it was elected, the Rudd government reversed Howard’s policy and reinstated the uranium ban. This hugely offended India and created the impression that Canberra was unreliable. The key figures in the new government, Rudd himself and his foreign minister, Stephen Smith, knew Labor’s policy was rubbish and never defended it ­privately. A few years later they ­reversed the policy at Labor’s ­national conference. But immense harm had been done.

The second time Labor destroyed the relationship was over the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving India, Australia, the US and Japan, which had grown up organically following the intimate co-operation in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Standing next to his Chinese counterpart, Smith unilaterally terminated Australian participation in the Quads.

This again infuriated India and still sits in the collective Indian strategic mind as an indicator of Australia’s strategic frivolousness. That the Liberals have never made Labor pay for this is a sign of their political ineptitude.

The Adani mine gives us a new chance to deepen a strategic relationship with India, and simultaneously gives Labor a new chance to bugger it up all over again.

One of Australia’s greatest strategic weaknesses is an excessive export dependence on the China market. Another of our greatest strategic and economic weaknesses is our lack of a deep, ­interest-based, intertwined relationship with India. The Adani mine allows us to address both.

Last year Indian coal imports grew by 18 per cent. Given that we are the second-largest coal ­exporter in the world, we have a pitiful share of the Indian market at 4.1 per cent.

This trails Indonesia at 62 per cent, South Africa at 20.9 per cent and the US at 7.5 per cent. If the Adani mine proceeds, we will leapfrog the US and become the third-largest coal exporter to India.

Moreover, if we were an intelligent country rationally pursuing our national interest, the chance for increasing that market share would be large. Our coal is higher quality than Indonesia’s and there are likely to be some constraints on Indonesia’s export capacity. Our coal would produce lower greenhouse emissions than Indonesian coal. The Indians like our coal all right but have been unhappy at the price fluctuations.

The best remedy to that, as with the Japanese in the 1960s and 70s, is for the Indians to invest in Australian production so they are on both sides of the price equation. Pursuing this kind of relationship with Japan made us the modern, wealthy nation we are today.

Adani is a huge Indian investment in Australia. Its failure would send a powerful message. Everything about Adani is right.

If Labor destroys its prospects, it will once more damage our ­national interest, economically and geostrategically.