Page 164 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

12 NOTHING BUT TRUTHINESS: PUBLIC DISCOURSES … 155

LIES:STATEMENTS THAT ARE NOT SCIENTIFIC,LOGICAL
OR BASED ON FACTS
Parliamentarians and supporters of the Carmichael mine also rely on frankly
mendacious statements to convince voters of their argument. Australia,
once again, is by no means the only place this is occurring; as Giroux and
Bhattacharya (2016, p. 2) note, “lying is part of an anti-politics of per-
formance and showmanship that turns lies into political spectacles”. The
best examples related to the Carmichael mine are the claims of the number
of jobs it will provide to the Queensland economy, where the employment
situation is portrayed as desperate.

The Adani Carmichael coalmine offers up to 10,000 new jobs, mainly in
Queensland; $20 billion of investment in Australia; and power, to build the
living standards of 100 million people in India (Landry 2015).

This figure of 10,000 new jobs has been repeated by virtually every mine
supporter since 2014, including the Prime Minister, the Attorney General,
and Liberal and National Party members of the Commonwealth and
Queensland Parliaments.
Once built, the mine is not projected to offer anywhere near 10,000
jobs. The Adani Corporation’s own economist predicted that the total
number is closer to 1464: ‘Adani’s economist, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL
Allen, found that Adani’s mine and rail operations would employ around
1800 people directly and create around 1000 downstream jobs in “other
services”’ (Amos and Swann 2015, p. 1). Moreover, in testimony before a
Senate Committee on how the Queensland government spends monies
from the federal government, it was reported that mining is a small fraction
of the Queensland economy, and is only viable due to significant subsidies
from the state. Economist Roderick Campbell declared:

The coal industry actually only accounts for 1.2 per cent of employment in
Queensland. It contributes around four per cent of Queensland government
revenue. If we stop and think about that for a second, that means that
basically 99 per cent of Queenslanders do not work in the coal industry….
Last year, the Australia Institute released research showing that over six years
the Queensland state government had put around $8 billion into spending
that was primarily aimed at benefiting the coal industry and we estimate that