Australian Marine Conservation Society Great Barrier Reef campaigner Gemma Plesman said the group was deeply concerned that the Abbott government was putting the coal industry’s interests before the Great Barrier Reef and the tourism industry that relied on it.
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Backing controversy-hit Indian mining giant Adani’s coal mine venture in Australia, Prime minister Tony Abbott has said the 16.5 billion dollar project was “vitally important” and “sabotaging” of such developmental plans using legal means was “dangerous” for the country.
“As a country we must, in principle, favour projects like this”, he reportedly said.
The exit of CBA comes on the heels of a court decision yesterday revoking the Australian government ” s environmental approval for the coal mine, one of the world ” s biggest under construction.
He said that it was extremely frustrating to witness projects as important as these could be prevented from being constructed.
“If… projects like this can be endlessly frustrated, that’s unsafe for our country and it’s tragic for the wider world”. He suggested that once the projects were found to be in compliance with the high environmental standards, it should be given a green light.
Adani, which had suspended work in a number of areas on the mine because of delays in obtaining government approvals, said it had ended the bank’s mandate over the holdups.
He believed that it was wrong for the job leaders to present themselves as “smarter than business or indeed smarter than the courts”.
The Prime Minister pointed out that the Adani Project would involve $21 billion in investment and help create 10,000 jobs.
“Australian resources can give them electricity and the interesting thing about Australian resources is that invariably they’re much better for the environment than the alternative”, he added.
The “mess” with Adani came about “because the government rushed its approvals and then it’s got tripped up in the court system”, Shorten said.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called for proper process to be followed to maintain a balance between business investment and a sustainable environment.
Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) will no longer offer financial advice to Indian company Adani’s Carmichael mine in Queensland.
However, Hunt claimed that declining the project was not a big deal and the Department of the Environment confirmed the minister would get more than a month’s time to reconsider its decision according to the advice.
The Federal Court’s decision to grant an application by the Mackay Conservation Group over the central Queensland mine was due to a technical issue. The group said the judgement ruled the approval by Environment Minister was invalid on environmental grounds.
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“Legislation imposes strict conditions on developments such as coal mines, and the courts’ task in these circumstances is to scrutinise the executive’s actions to ensure that any approvals fall within legislative parameters”, she said.
