Shorten’s excellent $17,000 ‘coral and coal’ adventure

Bill Shorten accepted a $17,000 private green-funded tour of the Great Barrier Reef and charter flight over the Adani coalmine.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Cairns. Picture: Brendan Radke

Bill Shorten accepted a $17,000 private green-funded tour of the Great Barrier Reef and charter flight over the Adani coalmine, during which he pledged to environmentalists that a Labor government would seek to use federal laws to revoke the licence of the Indian mining giant.

The Australian Conservation Foundation bankrolled a reef tour off Port Douglas after the Opposition Leader approached millionaire environmentalist Geoff Cousins before last Christmas. Mr Shorten disclosed details of the flights and snorkelling trip on his register of interest on Tuesday, the same day Mr Cousins claimed he had received assurances from the Labor leader that the opposition was on track to move against the $16.5 billion Adani project.

Mr Shorten boarded the Wavelength Reef Cruises vessel on January 23 to visit two sites on the Opal Reef. Mr Shorten was escorted on the tour by the ACF, Australian Marine Conservation Society campaign director Imogen Zethoven, and reef expert Terry Hughes.

The next day, Mr Shorten joined reef, groundwater and black-throated finch ­experts on an ACF-funded charter flight from Cairns to Carmichael River and Doongmabulla, including flying over the Adani site, before ending up in Townsville, accompanied by Mr Cousins and ACF chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy.

Following the reef tour, the trio had met at a Port Douglas cafe where they discussed how Labor could use the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to block the project.

“We did talk about how Labor could oppose the mine and what options are available to Labor to do that,” Ms O’Shanassy told The Australian. “We did have a detailed conversation about Bill’s concerns with the mine going ahead. He wasn’t convinced about the jobs … He was concerned about the ­effects on the tourism sector. He was quite affected by what he saw at the reef. That’s just my opinion.

“It was quite clear to me that Bill did not think the mine stacked up and he would go to Canberra and make a compelling case.”

In question time yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull branded Mr Shorten’s mixed messages on Adani “duplicitous”.

Mr Shorten is also facing a rift with his Queensland Labor colleagues. Queensland Resources Minister Anthony Lynham said yesterday the Indian conglomerate’s project had leapt more environmental hurdles than any other resources project.

GRAPHIC: Out on the reef

“Adani has had the green light since June last year, and we support it and want it to go ahead,” Dr Lynham said. “The Queensland government says time and time again, let’s go.”

Asked whether he knew of new environmental information that would justify a revocation of federal environmental approvals under the EPBC Act — as Mr Cousins has suggested Mr Shorten would do — Dr Lynham said: “All I can say is there are over 230 conditions. I have never seen a resources project so heavily conditioned than this resources project.”

North Queensland Labor stalwart Mike Brunker, a former coalminer and CFMEU official who fell 400 votes short of winning the seat of Burdekin at November’s Queensland election, said locals were sick of Mr Shorten “having it both ways” on Adani. Mr Brunker met Mr Shorten when he visited Mackay last week to tell locals he was supportive of coalmining. “He should be fighting on good Labor values,” Mr Brunker said. “People up here believe they’re being sold out by Labor. They believe the Labor Party should be there to support and create jobs.”

He warned Mr Shorten was risking vital support for Labor in regional Queensland for the sake of inner-city seats such as Batman.

The Prime Minister said Mr Shorten, who said there was “a role for coal in Australia” during a visit last week to north Queensland, was backing workers locked out of the Oaky North coalmine while giving ­private assurances to Mr Cousins that Labor would work towards overturning approvals for Adani. Mr Turnbull attacked Mr Shorten over his Port Douglas trip, saying that “most people, when they go snorkelling on the Barrier Reef, pay for it themselves”.

On January 30, a week after the reef tour, Mr Shorten said that if the Adani project did not stack up “commercially” or “environmentally” it would “absolutely not ­receive our support”.

Mr Shorten’s office last night refused to confirm whether taxpayers funded his travel to Cairns on January 23, ­before he went to Port Douglas for the reef tour, saying the ­information would be “published by the independent parliamentary ­expenses authority in the normal way”.

“It’s no secret that Bill is deeply sceptical of the proposed Adani coalmine,” a spokesman for Mr Shorten said.

Mr Cousins revealed he was approached by Mr Shorten about visiting north Queensland and said he decided to bring in the ACF to “organise all the logistics”.

“He rang me before Christmas last year and asked me if I would take him to north Queensland to see the relevant things that he needed to see in order to form a better view of Labor’s policy on Adani,” Mr Cousins said. “We had him way out to sea in a remote area off the reef off Port Douglas. And he was snorkelling for some hours along with Professor Hughes … who had laminated photographs of that part of the reef from 10 years ago, five years ago and last year so that Mr Shorten … could hold these photographs below the water and see what’s happened to the coral.”

On the January 24 charter flight over the Adani mine, Mr Shorten received briefings from groundwater expert Rod Fensham an associate professor at Queensland University and black-throated finch expert April Reside. Dr Reside said yesterday: “We’ve got very good evidence to show that the conditions that are on the mine as they stand will very likely send the black-throated finch extinct ... He (Mr Shorten) was very engaged with it and very interested to understand more about what was going on.”