Adani’s Australia Story: A Battle Over the Politics of Coal and Jobs. By Kabir Agarwal

Note: This is the fifth story in a five-part series that examines how the Adani and Carmichael coal mine has divided the Australian public and in the process, sparked fierce debate on issues such as coal-based energy, energy financing, jobs and the rights of indigenous people. Read the firstsecondthird and fourth parts

In May 2010, Kevin Rudd, the then prime minister of Australia, announced a new tax of 40% to be levied on mining activity. A little over a month later, Rudd had lost his job. The mining industry had come together to launch a fierce campaign in television and print media against the tax. Between May and June, $22 million (AUD) was spent on the campaign, at the end of which Rudd found himself losing popularity and was felled by his party colleague, Julia Gillard. Within a week of being sworn in as prime minister, Gillard reached an agreement with mining companies on a lower tax rate.

“Mining is vital to Australian politics. No government in Australia can survive if it is hostile to mining,” Paul Williams, senior lecturer in politics at Griffith University in Queensland, told me.
That would probably explain why the Adani group’s coal mine has received the backing of almost all political parties in Australia. The only opposition from a political party has come – unsurprisingly – from the Australian Greens party, a party with environmentalism at its core. Since the mine was first proposed in 2010, the Adani project has faced considerable headwinds owing to large-scale protests due to potential severe negative climate impacts, refusal of the traditional owners to part with the land on which the mine is to be built and progressively complicated financial scenarios. But the political support for the mine has been dauntless.

As the protests against the mine were gathering momentum, in August 2016, Matthew Canavan, the minister for resources and northern Australia in the Australian federal government, wrote an opinion piece in The Australian, the country’s largest selling national newspaper, titled ‘Mining is central to Australian history and has a strong future’. He argued strongly for further investment in the mining sector and earmarked the Adani coal mine as having the potential to contribute significantly to the development of northern Australia. “If the mine goes ahead, it will help develop a genuine frontier of our nation,” Canavan wrote.  


The ‘frontier’ Canavan wrote about is the Galilee basin – one of the largest untapped reserves of coal in the world estimated to contain 20 billion tonnes of coal – covering an area of 247,000 square kilometres in Central Queensland… read more:
https://thewire.in/197246/adanis-australia-story-crucial-ideological-battle-politics-coal-jobs/


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime