In 2010, an Indian mining company bought some leases over a giant and untapped coal basin in western Queensland.
This acquisition of conglomerate Adani Group kick-started one of the most controversial and politically divisive resource projects in Australia’s history – the Carmichael coal mine and railway project.
Before the year is over, and about eight years late, Adani says it will finally export its first coal, destined to be burned in a power plant.
The moment will be celebrated as a victory by its supporters, including many regional Queensland MPs and senators and conservative commentators.
Australia’s resource minister, Keith Pitt, was at the site in October – about 300km west of Mackay – to record a video celebrating the first coal mined. That would mean jobs and prosperity, he said.
Earlier this week, Adani Australia’s CEO Lucas Dow told ABC that coal had already been delivered to the company’s port at Abbot Point as the company runs tests of new trains along 200km of new railway lines. “We are very excited as the project is nearing completion,” he said.
But for its opponents, including climate change activists and some traditional owners, the Carmichael project always meant danger, and it became the focus of a campaign with an uncompromising two-word slogan: Stop Adani.
So while the first coal is waiting to wind its way through the Great Barrier Reef’s shipping channels, what about that campaign?
“We would prefer to have stopped Adani when it went through approvals, or when it was looking for funding and then in construction. If we have to wait until the project moves coal, then that’s what we do,” says Julien Vincent, CEO director of Market Forces, a campaign group that has worked to remove Adani’s opportunities to fund and insure the mine.
“There’s no star or warning or small print. There are no conditions. It’s just Stop Adani,” he says.
Carbon bomb
The Galilee Basin has an estimated 23 billion tonnes of coal.
When the first mine was proposed in 2012, Adani was one of about nine projects targeting the basin.
At the time, Greenpeace estimated that if all mines went ahead, the burning of coal would release around 700 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere – almost one and a half times Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
But while Adani was not the first company to declare an interest, it is the only one digging coal from the huge Galilee basin.
Success for Adani can mean opening the entire pool to coal development.
The original plans for the mine were to dig around 60 million tonnes of coal a year, making it the largest coal mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world.
After almost a decade – and a nearly eight-year delay in the original coal extraction schedule – the company now says it has scaled down the project to around 10 million tonnes. But Adani still has approvals for the higher levels.
In some narratives, the Adani mine helped tip the balance at the federal election in 2019. The final approvals from the state government awaited, and Adani launched an advertising and letterbox campaign criticizing the Labor state government over its handling of the project.
Marginal seats in central and northern Queensland swung sharply to the coalition, and a few days after the election, the state moved Labor to give Adani the necessary approvals, in some cases despite concerns from government experts on endangered species management plans.
Susan Harris Rimmer, director of the Policy Innovation Hub at Griffith University, says the mine became symbolic of a broader debate on jobs and climate action in the Queensland region.
“Politicians up there use strong binary language,” she said.
“They keep doing it because it worked. It’s the same with immigration or terrorism. It works [as a political strategy] so people will fall back on it. There is a playbook, they will try it again. “
Harris Rimmer said the anti-Adani convoy, led by former Green leader Bob Brown, became a hotspot and helped spread “us and them” rhetoric in parts of Queensland.
“I think that convoy became a picture of people from the south who lose nothing and who make us [in regional Queensland] look like the villains.
“This is what it looked like, I’m sure it was not the way it was meant to be, but it looked that way [people] come to tell this stupid society not to do this. “
‘A shitty moment’
In 2020, the Adani Group began removing its own name from its Australian activities. First, the company renamed its Adani mine to Bravus.
It then changed the name of the Adani Abbot Point Terminal, north of Bowen, to the North Queensland Export Terminal (the words Adani and coal do not appear on the company’s website).
“This name change certainly gave the impression that the name Adani was becoming an obstacle,” says Vincent. “If you’re sure of your brand, do not change it to anything else.”
Vincent says the campaign has had other contagious effects far away from the Adani mine.
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“It has been the catalyst for dozens of financial institutions around the world to rule out thermal coal projects,” he says. “The risk of being associated with large [coal] projects have become the reputation of kryptonite. “
In May, fossil fuel producers complained to a parliamentary inquiry that campaigns against industry are now making it harder to fund and insure large projects.
Adani told the investigation that loans and insurance had been declined and contractors and business partners had gone away.
In a post, the company said that “the boycott of Australia’s thermal coal industry by Australian banks and insurance companies is misunderstood and does not care about the obvious damage their decisions will have on the industry’s ability to remain globally competitive” and it will affect Australia’s economy.
Vincent says that while the first coal sent is “a bad moment for the campaign,” large financial groups continue to distance themselves from the project and join dozens of others.
Last month, one of the world’s largest banks severed ties with the project, saying the venture is incompatible with its environmental, social and managerial rules.
Activists continue to target the project – locking themselves to railway lines and rolling stock and suspending themselves from cranes in the company’s port. Two protesters climbed aboard one of the project’s trains this week and spent a day shoveling coal across the side.
Separately, some traditional Wangan and Jagalingou owners have long opposed the project, saying it would destroy their cultural land and risk the sacred Doongmabulla springs. The miner has a formal land use agreement with the Wangan and Jagalingou peoples, but the agreement is opposed by some traditional owners.
Traditional owners have conducted continuous cultural ceremonies at the mine lease for more than 90 days.
Adrian Burragubba, a traditional owner who has been fighting Adani for years, says Adani “should not be celebrated”.
His family and other traditional owners are concerned that cultural sites with “literally thousands of artifacts” are being disturbed.
Burragubba says his son Coedy McAvoy has been in the country since Aug. 28, performing ceremonies. “He declares that he will stay there,” Burragubba said. “It is our duty to look after the land and monitor what the mining company is doing.”
Adani has urged police to step in to remove McAvoy, as well as take stronger action against various protesters targeted at the railway.
In October, police told McAvoy and others who camped on the company’s mine lease that they would not remove them “at this time.”
Litmus test
The Australian Conservation Foundation, a member of the Stop Adani Alliance, successfully overturned the federal approval of the mine’s water system earlier this year, but the problem remains unresolved.
ACF CEO Kelly O’Shanassy said the campaign still had a lot to achieve. When insurance companies, financiers and contractors walked away, there were “still questions about the viability of the project”.
She says the group will work “incredibly hard” to stop the opening of the Galilee Basin, but Stop Adani is a crucial climate campaign.
“Your attitude towards Adani showed your attitude towards the climate, especially politically. It became a litmus test.
“The ACF has shifted its focus to escalating the clean future, and we could not have got people interested in it unless there was an end to coal and gas. I think we have won the public debate on that. “
Since the campaign against Adani began, the world’s financial markets have moved away from coal. At the Glasgow climate summit, more than 40 countries agreed to phase out coal power.
“If we decide that in 2021 we can not add more coal to the global market, then it is a decision we have to stick to,” says Vincent.
During the campaign, there have been dozens of other fossil fuel projects that have been announced, developed and approved. Did the focus on the Adani campaigns – and the eyes of the public – move to just one place in northern Queensland?
“Even a dark sky needs its darkest stars,” said David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
“The size of the Galilee basin required that attention.
“But the campaign drew attention to the overall problem and hopefully created that kind of societal enthusiasm to oppose [fossil fuel projects] everywhere else in Australia, not just at the Adani mine. “
The Guardian asked Adani Australia when it expected to export its first coal from the Carmichael mine and requested an interview with its CEO, Lucas Dow.
A spokeswoman sent a brief statement saying, “The Carmichael mine is on track to export coal in 2021.”
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