Indian mining group Adani says groups opposed to its Queensland coal mine development are using “vicious personal attacks” to push their agenda.
Chairman Gautam Adani told a forum in New Delhi on Friday resistance to the project in the Galilee Basin has been intense.
“In recent years our project has faced intense resistance abetted by some international NGOs and competitors who have turned to vicious personal attacks and used the press to their advantage,” Mr Adani said, according to Indian business news website Livemint.
The multi-billion dollar mine has faced strong opposition from environmental groups and the Australian Greens.
Mr Adani told the forum convened for commerce students it was possible to support both coal and renewable energy sources.
“The fact is that renewable energy technologies are not currently ready to provide uninterrupted base load power,” he said.
“The fact is that it is our responsibility to get electricity to the Indian child who needs to light that single bulb to educate himself.”
Last week, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said he was “increasingly sceptical” of the project, which is being supported by Queensland’s Labor government.
Mr Shorten’s spotlight on the mine is likely to intensify as Labor tries to fight off the Greens in the up-coming by-election for the marginal federal seat of Batman in Melbourne’s inner north.
Labor’s candidate for Batman, union leader Ged Kearney, told reporters last week she didn’t think the Adani mine would eventually go ahead.
“Personally, I really can’t see Adani going ahead,” she said.
“I know that Adani are not good employers. They don’t treat their employees very well. They don’t care about the impact on communities around the world where they work.”
OMG Adani’s mine is for the purpose to provide a singe light bulb for a male Indian child to study .
Such crap, obviously cheaper better, more efficicient etc is to provide these villages with some solar panels.
Mr Adani speaks and the lies and stupidity just falls out of his mouth
Poor Gautam Adani.
Just because he is running a Ponzi scheme at Abbot Point and in the Galilee basin that might make him billions of lovely dollars (while cooking the planet and potentially murdering billions of people!), doesn’t mean he has no feelings.
It is a little hard to believe, however, that the “press” is against him. Murdoch has a monopoly of the press in central/north Qld and, along with local, State and Federal politicians, willingly acts as Gautam’s propaganda machine. No lie is too big for the Adani empire to concoct nor for the Murdoch/LibNatLabor gang to spread. From the 10,000 job lie, to the “we pay our taxes” joke, to the alteration of coal pollution data contempt.
Poor old Gauty, why doesn’t anybody love him? Why won’t we simply accept that the land, water, reef, climate and our future should be sacrificed to his and his mates avarice? STOP ADANI.
The proposed Adani / Carmichael Mega Coalmine is an Environmental Abomination. The dreamers of and supporters of this project deserve every bit of abuse that comes their way. I love it when the Adani Fanboys run the line of ..”bringing the millions of India’s poor out of energy poverty”. No mention of condemning them to ill health from all the pollution before we even start on damage to the planet.