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At least I never said “Adani”…

Someone asked me how my wife feels about having our conversations repeated in my articles. Of course, I had to explain to the person that, while it’s true I have a wife, the one I write about is like the Liberal plan for jobs and growth: mainly fictional. However, it made me realise that many people don’t realise that most of what I write is completely made up. The confusing part, I guess, is that my prognostications are largely accurate and even my invented sources give more realistic information than the ones that the newspapers create.

However, it worries me sometimes that what I write seems to be proving a template for some of our less able politicians. While I have no evidence that they’re actually reading it, I’ve decided to let that pass on the grounds that we’re not only in a post-truth world, but we entered a post-evidence world quite a while ago. When John Howard, for example, told us that he had to support an emissions trading scheme when PM for political reasons but he rejected climate change on “intuition”, nobody mocked him for basing his judgement on a gut feeling and ignoring science.

So when I wrote my piece on a company removing the stuff from my property, a lot of people took it as an allegory for the way the whole Adani fiasco was going. Now I’d just like to point out that – just as Trump reminded us that he never said “Israel” in any of his bragging to Russia – I never said, “Adani”. It was all a work of fiction.

But the trouble with fiction is that people are quick to see parallels in real life. For example, if I were to write that the company told me that the space under my house would be ideal for a meth lab, then some people might think that there really is a space like that and that I’d be silly enough to put myself in danger by have something as dangerous as that under my house. Unless, of course, we were using coal as a heat source. Whatever, some of you may suggest that selling dangerous drugs is the wrong thing to do anyway, but I’ve been convinced by the words of Malcolm Turnbull, “If we don’t sell, someone else will.” He went on to say that ours was better quality.

Ok, ok, he wasn’t talking about drugs. He was talking about coal which, as everyone knows, will lift India out of poverty because once Adani starts producing, there’ll be so much coal that even someone with no job can afford it. However, I think the point remains.

In reality, I have no intention to start a meth lab. Ok, the company and I did discuss it, but just like One Nation and their attempt to make lots of money from campaign materials, we knocked it on the head almost straight away. And that’s the point, isn’t it? I mean it’s fine to discuss a plan for doing something immoral or illegal providing you knock it on the head straight away… Or when someone produces a tape of you talking about it. Which hasn’t happened in my case, because – like I pointed out before – my writing is largely fictional like One Nation’s concern for the battler.

So much for me…

Let’s move on to Adani!

Last year, I wrote that the Adani mine wouldn’t go ahead because it just isn’t commercially viable. I did add the caveat that there was always the possibility that governments would be so determined not to have the deal collapse because, well, jobs and growth and coal and all that, and Queensland has really high unemployment and we can’t use government money to come up with ways of employing them. We have to give it to a company and let them find ways to employ them because the Adani mine is going to create 10,000 jobs according to one estimate, but that includes the government jobs in 2085 cleaning it up after whichever Adani company responsible has declared bankruptcy.

So we offer them an interest free loan to build a railway… Well, we might. And when that’s not enough the Queensland state government offers them a bit of a royalty “holiday” which means that the Adani family will make more in the first year than Queensland makes in the first ten. But that’s not enough. Adani is now considering its position and has put the mine indefinitely on hold.

Yep, that’s why I write fiction. The truth is so unbelievable!

30 comments

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  1. Ella Miller

    Truth sometimes is stranger than fiction.
    Did Adani not say that mine would automated from pit to port…so where are the jobs?
    I wish the QLD ALP would get the wax out of their ears and the greedy $ signs out of their eyes.
    The ABC published of incomes of companies who have payed NO TAX.

    Adani Abbot Point Holdings had an income of $350,204,603 and payed no tax is this legally sanctioned theft????

    Where is the benefit to Australia ?

  2. Adrianne Haddow

    Exactly, Rossleigh. The truth is so unbelievable.
    My husband and I were discussing the point of providing Adani with the billion dollars from the NAIF to build the automated railway, and the umpty million give away in royalty payments, and the waiving of any fees for the huge water resources this company needs to run its devil project.
    With all this largesse to throw around, why doesn’t the Queensland government use these funds to provide their electorate with jobs, state owned and state run?
    But I guess providing employment for your own people is so last century, and smacks of that abhorrent socialism.

  3. Matters Not

    Re Adani – Annastacia Palaszczuk is in great political trouble.

    The Indian mining giant has decided to put on hold its final decision on its central Queensland project until the Palaszczuk Government gives “clarity” over lower or deferred royalties. A company spokesman said they were waiting for the State Government to advise on whether it would offer a lower royalty rate or deferred royalties.

    That is absurd and ridiculous.”

    Adani is also still waiting on changes to Native Title legalisation, which are expected to be go before Parliament later this year. The company previously said the proposed mine would create thousands of local jobs, and it was expected to produce 25 million tonnes of coal per year during its first phase.

    The former Newman government granted the mine preliminary approval in May 2014, before it received federal backing five months later.

    That it mightn’t go ahead is to the advantage of PHON and very much to the disadvantage of Labor. Probably curtains for them at the State level. . That’s the political reality. Sure it’s all based on lies but the local punters are ‘believers’ Mining was their past and was the promise for the future.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-23/adani-carmichael-mine-decision-delay-blow-to-confidence/8549280

  4. Mark Needham

    Adani, should be told to shove the whole Fiasco, up there nether regions, and told not to come back.

    A Pastoral family, of well renown, had recently sold there holdings to a concern in China. At the handing over of the Cheque Ceremony, the Aussie Broker, who organised the whole deal, was talking to the old owners, when everything had sort of quietened down to a dull roar.
    “Y’know”, said the broker, “When I asked you how much you wanted for your place, and you said 20 million. Well, I am sorry to say, that I reckon you could have got 30 million, from the Chinese. They desperately needed your property to make all there other plans actually work”

    “That’s all right”, said the cocky, “I would’ve taken 5 million, just to see the arse end of the place.”

    Mark Needham

  5. helvityni

    Yes but ,no but, you just never know with those mining magnates… Maybe Adani will turn out to be a good and generous person like Andrew Forrest, who according to Mal is acting out of LOVE and is making a 400 million dollar donation, the biggest ever in Oz…

    Maybe Adani will double it, and our governments don’t need to do their job anymore and worry about the sick and poor and the old… Charity will be our Saviour.

    I too am inspired, I did some Autumn clearing in the house; hubby can take all my rejects to Father Riley…..

  6. Don A Kelly

    “I’ve been convinced by the words of Malcolm Turnbull, “If we don’t sell, someone else will.” He went on to say that ours was better quality”.
    If the coal is to be used for power generation then it doesn’t need to be “better quality”. Queensland has an abundance of high quality Coking Coal that id used for iron and steel production.

  7. kristapet

    Rossleigh is saying he writes fiction …… I agree, if it were true, we would think it was
    unbelievable, because what is happening here, in this country, is unbelievable
    particularly the bit, that, where, we see, that, certain politicians aren’t made to face the consequences of their actions,
    no matter how heinous, those actions are!

  8. Jagger

    Truth is the most precious thing in the world today, that’s why it’s rarely used.

  9. helvityni

    “Norway’s taxation approach and other measures ensure that its natural resources are used sustainably for the entire nation’s long-term wealth.”

    Northern Lights by Dr Andrew Scott, Associate Professor in Politics and Policy, Deakin University.

  10. Terry2

    Is this government working for us or against us ?

    Australia is set to become the world’s largest exporter of LNG by 2021, overtaking Qatar in the Persian Gulf.

    But in 2021, when both countries are each forecast to export roughly 100bn cubic metres of LNG, Australia’s government is expected to receive just $800m in Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT) revenues, while Qatar’s government is expected to receive $26.6bn in royalties.

    And here we have Matt Canavan pushing the Queensland government to give Adani a Royalties holiday for a few years. Let’s not forget that royalties are the cost of the commodity and we want to give it away, free ??

  11. diannaart

    Dear Premier Palaszczuk

    Please cast your mind across Australia’s great dry inland westward ho, to Western Australia. Remember how they had this massive mining boom? Admittedly iron ore is only slightly less dodgy than coal mining (native title holders lost their titles just as they are doing in QLD) but iron ore has multiple uses, unlike coal which basically burns and pollutes, even clean coal still burns and pollutes, just slightly less (polluting) after a $hit-load of technology is attached to the process.

    WA was rolling in money, dollars were erupting out of everything, except all this lovely money did not wind up with Western Australia, it made a lot of already rich people richer and now WA is crying poor. wanting an extra dollop of the GST – where is all that profit?

    You seriously think Adani will result in money for your state rather than the players in coal mining? They’re already ripping you off with your gauche display of offers and they haven’t even started mining yet.

    No one could make this stuff up.

  12. Johno

    diannaart
    Hear hear, well said !!

  13. leighton8

    Insanity … covered in prospective coal dust residue ….

  14. helvityni

    Why not ask Turnbull, why is he convinced that the ‘nuanced’ /better coal has to be dug out…. The scientist on Q&A, Lawrence Krauss said: leave it there, do not dig it out… Anna foolishly thinks she would be helping the masses of Queensland unemployed…

    I don’t know Turnbull’s or Canavan’s reasons, I agree with the Tasmanian Senator Lisa Singh and the above mentioned scientist: leave it there….

    Time to move on, do things better, Climate Change is REAL….not fake…. or whatever the Trumps of this world say…

  15. Rossleigh

    Look, it’s really quite simple…
    If the Turnbull government really thinks that this project is in jeopardy because of a refusal of the Queensland government to provide $320 million in royalty relief, then why don’t they offer to lend it to the Queensland Government on the same terms that they’ll offer the loan to Adani? Interest free and pay it back when you feel like it!

  16. paul walter

    Agree with last.

    Like the rest of you, I’ve been following it for a bit and after reading a horrifically abusive editorial in a Murdoch rag yesterday, announced here in another thread that my sympathies had actually reverted to Palaszczuk and that state government, as pawns in a larger game being played by people like Adani, Murdoch and Turnbull and the tory cronies in Canberrra and elsewhere.

    The truth is, in a nationalised and globalised world where Australia is now far less an independent nation and regions and states have little clout as to economic decisions (and swindles), it must be wrong to exclusively blame patsies like Palasczczuk, when others even more culpable in the affair avoid having a spotlight shone on them for their roles in it all.

    Am glad to discover Ross Leigh has a wife and urge him to stop beating her forthwith.

  17. kristapet

    Right on the money and nailing it diannaart

  18. kristapet

    I also think Rossleigh’s
    “Look, it’s really quite simple…
    If the Turnbull government really thinks that this project is in jeopardy because of a refusal of the Queensland government to provide $320 million in royalty relief, then why don’t they offer to lend it to the Queensland Government on the same terms that they’ll offer the loan to Adani? Interest free and pay it back when you feel like it!”
    If only, Turnbull had the insight to do just that ……now that would be progress, doing something for Australia, and leaving Adani buried, along with his swindle and all that dirty, dirty, black coal, kept in the ground and not spewing all over everything and the “The Great Barrier Reef”

  19. Pappinbarra Fox

    Adani is playing Australia for a mug.

  20. Leonard

    pappi fox, true, it reminds me of the saying ‘taking candy from a baby’.
    The pollies are either out of their depth in understanding how to negotiate or they don’t care.
    https://adanifiles.com.au/#dodgy

  21. The AIM Network

    We’ve added a few features that give you much more ease and flexibility when writing comments that include bold, italics, links, images, quotes etc. We’ve looked for a cheat sheet/s that is/are the most simple to read – a task in itself! – and these two should do it:

    Markdown Quick Reference Cheat Sheet

    https://beegit.com/markdown-cheat-sheet

    Some examples of how easy they are:

    For italics, you now simply put an * before and after the word.

    For bold words, you now simply put two ** before and after the word.

    For quotes you now simply put an < before the section you want to quote and leave a space where you want it to end.

  22. Terry2

    Michael – AIMN Network

    Great stuff with the new features : how do you block in a quote etc – see Matters Not above ?

    Cheers

  23. The AIM Network

    Terry, copy the quote you want to use, type > then paste the text. End it with a full stop and press enter

  24. Matters Not

    What about if you want to use block quote but want to use your own sentences that might contain full stops? (No paste.) Will it ‘end’ when you don’t want it to?

  25. Michael Taylor

    I’m experimenting with that one myself, MN. Until I find out how to do it properly I’ll keep using the ‘blockquote’ system.

  26. The AIM Network

    We apologise for the break in service just then. There was a problem with the server, affecting all sites on that server.

  27. Rossleigh

    Wow

    It really works!

  28. diannaart

    Just wanted to comment on a point Paul Walter raised which is in the sad but true category

    The truth is, in a nationalised and globalised world where Australia is now far less an independent nation and regions and states have little clout as to economic decisions (and swindles), it must be wrong to exclusively blame patsies like Palasczczuk, when others even more culpable in the affair avoid having a spotlight shone on them for their roles in it all.

    While I will continue to rail against all those desperate for a quick and very extremely finite $ to be made in further releasing of coal/carbon, I agree Palasczczuk is but a small player.

  29. Michael Taylor

    That damn server crashed again. Sorry about that, folks.

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