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12 NOTHING BUT TRUTHINESS: PUBLIC DISCOURSES … 157

This appeal was dismissed in November 2016, and was re-appealed in
February 2017, opposing the granting of mining leases to which the local
group did not agree. Litigation continues in federal and Queensland court
in late February 2017, complicated by a series of decisions elsewhere in
Australia that called for Native Title Land Use Agreements to be approved
by all members of Native groups (rather than a simple majority). In
response, the Attorney General, George Brandis, has proposed an ‘urgent
bill’ to change the Native Title Laws so that the Adani mining lease can be
pushed through the courts in spite of objections by the Aboriginal stewards
of the land (Guardian 13 February 2017). 3
Another example of the deployment of ‘lies’ are the ways politicians
have tried to deflect the effects the Carmichael mine will have on the
neighbouring Great Barrier Reef. Although the Galilee Basin is inland from
the coast, the mine will have devastating effects on the Reef, which is
already under threat from climate change, acidification and agricultural
run-off (Guardian 2016). Shipping the coal to India will require a massive
expansion of the coastal coal port at Abott Point, including dredging of
parts of the reef, and the amount of coal shipped through the treacherous
waters of the Great Barrier Reef will drastically increase if the mine is
approved. More generally, the mine’s contributions to global CO 2 emis-
sions will contribute to rising temperatures that are already killing the reef.
Politicians, however, have deflected these inconvenient facts by arguing
that the mine’s inland location absolves the Carmichael from any effects on
the Great Barrier Reef; as Queensland Senator MacDonald explained

The Adani mine is some 300 kilometres from the coast. (…) Of course, 300
kilometres inland is nowhere near the Great Barrier Reef and all the pro-
tections in place to protect the Great Barrier Reef (MacDonald 2016).

CONCLUSIONS
Post-truth may be 2016’s ‘word of the year,’ but the use, meaning and
implications of this changing form of public communication requires
additional scrutiny. Our concern has been two-fold. The first is to highlight
the ways that ‘post truth’ politics are currently extending beyond the US
and UK to Australia, becoming a general feature of the arguments made by