Shorten stalling for time on Adani mine, hoping project falls over

Bill Shorten can’t give a straight answer on his position on the development of the $16 billion Adani coal project in northern Queensland, which it is claimed will create 10,000 jobs in an area devastated by unemployment.

Indeed, the Labor leader’s answers are so far from straight they are circular.

The Opposition Leader is adopting all the irrational arguments used by a cabal of foreign-funded activists determined to conflate all available populist issues to destroy Australia’s coal industry while he parades traditional Labor values to help “ordinary Australian workers”.

The danger for Shorten is that his strengthening anti-Adani position looks like Labor adopting the anti-coal theology that is at odds with ALP support for jobs.

For a leader showing definite signs of internal pressure and dissent, and being pushed “too far to the left” by the Greens, Shorten is playing with coal fire.

Confronted yesterday with a straightforward question of whether he was “for or against the Adani coalmine”, Shorten flubbed and obfuscated as he tried not to offend the Greens-leaning voters of Batman or definitively declare his opposition to the creation of thousands of jobs.

“Labor has always said if the deal stacks up, commercially and environmentally — that has been our position,” Shorten said. But he is doing everything he can to see that it doesn’t.

Labor is prevaricating on Adani, hoping the project falls over and gives a victory to the anti-coal movement without the ALP actually taking a stand that will alienate Queensland Labor voters. At least Shorten is hoping not to have to make a decision until after the Batman by-election. In the meantime, Shorten and his leadership team are desperately dissembling by rolling out the activist’s circular arguments and deceptions about Adani to cover their political cowardice and policy paralysis.

Shorten, Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen have all leapt on a report on The Guardian Australia site that Adani didn’t submit a full report on water contamination at Abbot Point to throw doubt on the mine’s entire state and federal environmental approvals.

Shorten said: “When it comes to the Adani coalmine, I think that the government now needs to investigate the allegations which were raised that samples were falsified.”

As deputy Labor leader Plibersek said yesterday: “We are obviously looking at some of the issues that continue to emerge around this project. The longer time goes on, the more we see about the economic and environmental questions around this proposal.”

Bowen, the opposition’s Treasury spokesman, suggested the legal fight over the $12,000 fine for water contamination at the port — 400km from the proposed mine — threatened the approval for the whole project.

As Labor adopts the activist’s general argument that all coal is a danger to the Great Barrier Reef — from greenhouse gas emissions because it has failed to make a direct link between the mine and the reef — Shorten tries to argue the new mine “would jeopardise the job security of existing coalminers”.

Shorten also uses the false logic that Adani should not get support because it has missed deadlines and failed to get Australian bank support.

“Time after time, (Adani) keep saying that they’re going to have this project up and running, and they miss a deadline? I’m beginning to wonder if the people of north Queensland are being led on with this promise of fake jobs and they’re never going to materialise,” he said yesterday.

Of course, the missed deadlines have been the result of at least seven years of delays caused by activists’ lawfare and political campaigns. For Shorten to say “Adani hasn’t managed to convince a single Australian bank to help finance this operation” is a travesty of an argument and victory for the anti-coal movement.