A day after Adani’s name change, one man’s protest cripples $2 billion mine
A worker has locked himself to machinery in a environmental protest at a railway construction site of the Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland.
A supplied image shows Magnetic Island resident Barney Jackson staging a protest by attaching himself to a concrete batching plant on an Adani construction site near Belyando. (Photo: AAP Image/Supplied by Frontline Action on Coal)
Barney Jackson used a steel elbow lock to attach himself to a concrete batching plant near Belyando on Friday morning.
The $2 billion mine is being built by Indian-owned Bravus Mining and Resources, formerly known as Adani Australia.
The company is building its 10 million tonne-a-year capacity thermal coalmine in the Galilee Basin, which could be expanded to six times that size.
Bravus is also building a rail line that will be opened to other companies if it gets the tick of approval to mine the coal-rich region.
Jackson strung out a banner with the words “Water is Life” on it in protest against the company’s water extraction rights.
“If anything is sacred, it’s water. If there is no water we all die, humans included. Water is life says it all,” he said in a statement.
“Growing up in north Queensland where water is often very scarce, Adani having a licence to take unlimited amounts of water makes me very concerned.”
Comment has been sought from Bravus Mining and Resources.
Jackson, who is a worker on the site, said he was unconcerned about breaching new state laws targeting elbow locks.
“The most dangerous thing I could do with this is not use it. The repercussions from the Carmichael mine are far more dangerous than me locking on with a steel tube,” he said.
“I don’t want to be arrested but I don’t want the mine to go ahead even more, so here I am.”
The Indian company changed its name from Adani Australia on Thursday.
Chief executive David Boshoff said after 10 years of local operations and with construction on the Carmichael mine underway, it was time for Adani to have its own Australian brand.
“We are proud to be a dedicated Australian company that is part of the north Queensland community,” he said in a statement.
“We will continue to stand up and deliver for the good of our community, no matter how courageous it requires us to be, and Bravus, our new name, reflects this intent.”
Opponents of the mine were quick to point out the Latin word “bravus” did not mean courageous or brave.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific head of research Dr Nikola Casule said bravus actually meant vulgar and was based on the words barbarus or barbarian.
“A word with its roots in ‘barbarian’ is fitting for a company whose proposed Carmichael mega-mine would accelerate the global warming crisis that threatens our own, human civilisation’s life on planet earth,” Casule said.
