Adani FID delivers blow to green activist campaign: QRC

THE announcement of Adani’s final investment decision (FID) is great news for regional Queensland and a blow to the green activist campaign aimed at derailing this project at every turn according to the Queensland Resources Council.

Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Ian Macfarlane said the FID illustrated Adani’s commitment and investment to Queensland.

“After more than a decade, and despite a relentless and well-funded anti-coal campaign, the Carmichael coal mine and rail project has reached its FID,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“This is great news for regional Queensland and will add to the prosperity our resources sector already contributes to the state, in addition to providing a reliable, high-energy, low-emission fuel to deliver electricity to some of the 300 million Indians without power.”

Electricity is a luxury to those Indians, which is taken for granted by the foreign-funded activists whose propaganda campaigns are based on fabrications, not science and due diligence, Mr Macfarlane said.

“The green activist strategy is clear, because it was leaked to the media in 2012. Stopping Australia’s Coal Export Boom, authored by the who’s who of green activist groups, details forensically how activists will try to end coal and gas production in Australia.”

The playbook states: Our strategy is to ‘disrupt and delay’ key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry and continually building the power of the movement to win more. We are now seeing this strategy play out chapter by chapter, Mr Macfarlane said.

“Of most concern is that a portion of the anti-fossil fuel brigade is funded by overseas backers, which is why the Queensland Resources Council has backed a federal government report calling for a ban on foreign-funded donations to activist groups,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“Whether they like it or not, Australian taxpayers are being taken for a ride by a sophisticated local and foreign network of green activist groups and their rich-list local and foreign funders.

“Foreign groups are interfering in our resource development projects which have already been subject to strict legal and social scrutiny before being democratically approved.”

The resources sector is a long-standing provider of revenue and jobs to Queensland and proudly operates under some of the highest environmental standards in the world.

In 2015-16 year it contributed $55.7 billion and one in seven jobs across the state, with more than 20,000 businesses benefiting and $2.2 billion in royalties flowing into state revenues that pays for teachers, nurses and police.

www.qrc.org.au

 

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