Shorten to pay for sell-out on Adani, say Queensland voters

Mike Brunker has a message for Labor: if you turn your back on Adani, say goodbye to north Queensland at the next election.

Councillor and former head of the Collinsville lodge of the CFMEU, Mike Brunker, at Adani's Abbot Point coal terminal. Picture: Cameron Laird.

Mike Brunker has a message for Labor and its Melbourne-based leader: if you turn your back on the Adani coalmine, say goodbye to north Queensland at the next federal election.

Having come within 400 votes of winning the state seat of Burd­ekin at last November’s state election, which was dominated by the future of the $16 billion project, the former coalminer and mining union official is horrified by Bill Shorten’s back-pedalling on Adani.

The Opposition Leader renewed his criticism of the mine yesterday, questioning whether people doing it tough in regional Queensland were being “led on with the promise of fake jobs”.

Coming on the heels of comments on Friday that he was ­“increasingly sceptical” about the mine, Mr Shorten’s repositioning has fuelled speculation he will ditch federal Labor’s qualified support for Adani to hold the Greens at bay at a by-election in the Melbourne electorate of ­Batman.

Mr Brunker warned that the ALP stood to lose many more federal seats in Queensland by pandering to inner-city elites rather than “fighting on Labor values”.

His struggling hometown of Bowen, the service centre for the Abbot Point coal terminal, is in line to benefit from the thousands of jobs Adani has promised to ­construct and operate the vast project.

Publican Bruce Hedditch at the bar of his Larrikin Hotel. Picture: Cameron Laird

“To win one seat in frickin Melbourne, they have wiped out their chances of two or three seats here in the coal belt,” the life-long Labor man said. “I tell you what, I wouldn’t want to be running the Labor campaign in Capricornia, Dawson or Herbert.

“They know they have got to win in Queensland to win government, and the way they are going they’ve got no chance. They’re giving it away to the Greens.”

Former state Labor MP Jim Pearce, who lost his central Queensland seat of Mirani to One Nation at the November 25 poll, echoed Mr Brunker.

“There is strong support for the mine going ahead in this region and I think anybody relying on support from that area would be fooling themselves if they go against the mine,” he said.

Through the Liberal National Party, the federal Coalition holds 21 of the 30 seats in Queensland, making it the state with the most for Mr Shorten to vie for if he is to become prime minister.

Equally, Malcolm Turnbull will look to pressure Labor in key marginals such as Townsville-based Herbert — where Adani is setting up its headquarters and a fly-in, fly-out workforce to be split with Rockhampton. The central Queensland city anchors the government’s most vulnerable seat of Capricornia on a margin of only 0.63 per cent.

Mr Brunker, 52, spent 15 years as mayor of Bowen before running unsuccessfully for the federal seat of Dawson, then Burdekin at the state level.

Bowen small business owner Tracey Bazzo. Picture: Cameron Laird

In his coalmining days, he headed the Collinsville lodge of the CFMEU, burnishing his Labor credentials. He still sits on the local council and puts in punishing hours managing a newsagency and other business interests.

His dismay deepened when ACTU president Ged Kearney, Mr Shorten’s handpicked candidate for Batman, denounced Adani in even more scathing terms last week, claiming the ­Indian company was a bad ­employer and “didn’t care” about local communities.

“I’m an old unionist too,” Mr Brunker said. “I grew up in the mines … for her to sit there in Melbourne and basically wipe us, to forget about the guys in the mining industry, it’s just disgraceful,” he said.

Adani hit back yesterday, trumpeting the $3.3 billion it had sunk into the project to create 800 “real” jobs so far. It said it paid $7.2 million in monthly wages, a down payment on the 10,000 ­“direct and indirect jobs” that would be generated by the mine.

“Those are jobs with Adani, with our contractors and in the supporting mining industry and community businesses like supermarkets and petrol stations,” a spokesman said.

Bowen chamber of commerce boss Bruce Hedditch, a publican who also chairs the local LNP branch, found himself in the un­accustomed position of being on the same page as Mr Brunker.

From the front bar of the Larrikin Hotel, Mr Hedditch said: “There is just a phobia about Adani … so much fake news coming out on what the mine is supposed to be affecting. There are people in this community who don’t want coal but that is only a small proportion — 10 to 15 per cent at most.”

Tracey Bazzo, of Bowen Pools and Pumps, said the once-­prosperous town of 10,000 had been hit hard by the downturn in mine construction and drought, forcing people to move for work. “We have been hurting a lot for years and what you have got to understand is that we need this mine … we need the confidence it will bring,” she said.