The Indian mining mogul, Gautam Adani, and the Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszczuk, are confident the 200-square-kilometre coalmine planned for central Queensland will go ahead. Adani told Palaszczuk, who’s visiting India with a 25-member delegation of mayors and state officials to spruik the project, he hopes to start work on it by August this year. "We expect the final [Australian] federal approvals by May-June. We need just about three months from thereon to actually begin the work on the mine. Which means we can kick-start work from August this year," Adani told the Press Trust of India news agency. He said he expects the first coal to come out of the mines by 2020.
Echoing Adani's confidence, Palaszczuk, a member of the Labor party,
sounded sanguine about securing the pending federal approvals anytime soon as
Australia’s national parliament is now in session and is keen to begin a debate
on the project.
"Most of the approvals are in. There is no approval pending from my
[state] government. Some legislations are currently before the federal
parliament. I don't believe there will be any obstacles for that final piece of
legislation in the federal parliament."
“The legislation she talks about is the Brandis bill to change the Native Title Act -- the ‘Adani Amendments’," note Adrian Burragubba and Murrawah Johnson, leaders of Aboriginal opponents to the mine.
“Adani believe their mine will go ahead, because our political leaders keep telling them they’ll remove all the obstacles in their way,” they write.
“We knew all along she was looking for a fix for Adani because we have their fake ILUA on the ropes. Will her Federal Labor colleagues support her?”
An ILUA is an Indigenous Land Use Agreement. A recent court ruling stipulates that all "traditional owners", i.e. indigenous people, have to be involved in making such an agreement for it to be valid. This didn’t happen with the Adani project.
Adani rented a crowd of Wangan & Jagalingou people, all expenses paid, and claims that’s met the requirement. Some members of the tribe want the mine, hoping for jobs.
The coal-addicted and -funded federal government has hastily cobbled together legislation to get around the court ruling, which affects all indigenous land use agreements across Australia.
Speaking for the Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owners Council, Burragubba and Johnson urged supporters to keep writing to party leaders to demand that they “don't pre-empt the Senate's report just because Palaszczuk and Adani want to remove our rights, as though they were a mere obstacle in their path of destruction”.
“Our rights are too important to be rolled over by some political insider’s dodgy deal.”
Previous coverage:
Intervention continues to cause harm
10 Years On: The Northern Territory Intervention Continues To Cause Harm
Cashless Cards And Rising Crime: An Intervention That Keeps On Giving
21 March 2017: 'Facing electoral annihilation and media pressure, the Howard Government launched an unprecedented assault on Aboriginal rights and communities. A decade on, Senator Rachel Siewert says the federal government is still hiding behind its failures.'
"At the time of the announcement, and as the Government prepared to send the army into the Northern Territory, a group of senior Aboriginal women from the NT sat in my office for an unrelated meeting and sobbed.
"The intervention ripped decision making powers away from Aboriginal people, and wrapped up into this policy was the Basics Card, a form of income management that to this day has failed in its objectives."
Rachel Siewert, Author at New Matilda
Fears investors may have been misled
Adani Group is facing growing pressure to reveal which company in its complex corporate web has applied for a $1 billion subsided loan from the Australian Government, amid fears money could be shifted to a tax haven and investors may have been misled.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-22/adani-facing-growing-pressure-investors-may-have-been-misled/8376794