UN to be told: stop fighting Adani

Australia will formally reject the United Nations’ intervention over the Adani coalmine.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan. Picture: AAP

Australia will formally reject the UN’s intervention over the Adani coalmine, ­accusing it of blindly accepting ­inaccurate claims of green activists and dismissing the majority support of indigenous landholders.

After lobbying by US law firm Earth Justice, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year publicly urged the Morrison government to suspend the Carmichael project as it had not been approved by “all native title claimants”.

Resources Minister Matt Cana­van yesterday said the Morrison government would write to the UN committee to formally correct the “clear errors” in its understanding of Australian law.

Senator Canavan said the UN had accepted incorrect claims that 2017 legislation enshrining majority rule within indigenous groups when considering land-use agreements was designed to undermine land rights.

He said the amendments, which followed the Federal Court’s McGlade ruling, had been widely backed by individual indigenous groups, the representative Native Title Council and Labor.

“They insinuated that these changes were effectively made to limit indigenous rights or somehow advantage this evil Adani project. This is just a massive misunderstanding of what happened,” Senator Canavan said.

“They were done after significant consultation with those groups and with the national ­Native Title Council.

“They helped protect over 200 indigenous land-use agreements which provide benefits to indigenous people which would have been put at risk without the agreements.”

The committee said it was “particularly concerned” by the 2017 law, derided by activists as the “Adani amendment”, to ­ensure indigenous land-use agreements needed only majority support among traditional owners. In Adani’s case, the indigenous land-use agreement with the Wangan and Jagalingou people was endorsed by 294 of 295 clan members in a 2016 ballot, after years of consultation with the ­Indian company.

Queensland’s Labor government is holding up the Adani project over the company’s plan to manage the area’s population of black-throated finches.

The government has received an independent review of the plan by environmental scientist Brendan Wintle, but last night missed Adani’s 5pm deadline to deliver the report.

Adani has accused the government of “shifting the goalposts” on its project, while the Liberal National Party said Labor was delaying the final go-ahead to prevent the issue becoming a distraction for Bill Shorten ahead of the federal election due in May.

Labor backed the native title amendment after a court judgment added a “high degree of uncertainty” by requiring votes approving land-use agreement to be carried unanimously.

Senator Canavan suggested the committee do its own ­research.

“International organisations seem to take as given claims made by vested interests in the big environmental movement,” he said.

The W&J Family Council — a minority group of traditional owners opposed to the mine — has criticised the legal change as an “Adani amendment” designed specifically to prop-up the “dodgy” land-use deal, which includes $250 million of economic opportunities.

However, traditional owners last week wrote to the UN insisting that the majority of clan members still supported the agreement with Adani.