If you’ve been reading newspapers, listening to the Abbott Government, or paying attention to mining companies lately – you’d be forgiven for thinking the Carmichael megamine project is ready to bring thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars to Australia. Sadly, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s our coal industry fact check.
This isn’t the first time we’ve found the government and mining companies to be grossly exaggerating the benefits of the coal industry and this week the truth came out.
An ongoing court case before the land court in Queensland has revealed that the 10,000 jobs Carmichael was claimed to have offered the state is actually more like 1,400. That’s more than 8,000 jobs that were falsely promised to the people of Queensland.
And what about the benefit to Queensland from royalties from the Carmichael project? Again, Adani’s figures were exaggerated to promise $22 billion AUD when the reality is around $7.8 billion – a disparity of more than $14 billion.
Unfortunately, these figures were not only reported by mining companies themselves, but also repeated by the Abbott government and mainstream media outlets like the Courier Mail. Last night, news analysis program MediaWatch took the Courier Mail to task over inaccuracies and misinformation in reporting the Carmichael project – watch here.
Check out the full story in our infographic below.
Why would advocates of the coal industry be spreading these fibs? Because they don’t have the truth on their side. Coal is on its way out as world leaders rally to combat climate change with real action. Everyone from the Pope to US President Barack Obama are stepping up and getting angry about our changing climate. China has started to cut coal imports, marking the death keel for a dying coal industry.
Join those on the right side of history and tell the Abbott and Queensland governments to stop peddling misinformation and spin and do what’s right by our climate and Reef: stop the Carmichael mine.
