The campaign to Stop Adani presents the progressive movement with its most complex challenge since its abject failure to secure an emissions trading scheme nearly a decade ago.

While the immediate focus of the Stop Adani campaign may be a byelection in inner-city Melbourne, this is about much more than which progressive woman wins the superhero-style moniker, Member for Batman.

After three years of intense work, the Stop Adani campaign has taken off, warding off local banks, offshore investors and the Queensland premier by transforming a previously unknown Indian billionaire into a popular T-shirt line. Where it ultimately lands will go a long way towards determining the future of coal exports, the state of the Queensland economy and even the outcome of the next federal election.

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For federal Labor, the prize of a unified left campaigning nationally to hold the Turnbull government to account for its lamentable record on climate change is compelling. From its failed targets, to its war on renewables, to its brazen promotion of the coal industry, the Coalition should be the target of a once-in-a-generation wave for change, driven by young voters who would for once see a tangible difference between the major parties.

To unleash these forces, though, Labor needs to push further than it would naturally be comfortable, risking the ire of mining unions that are part of its powerful industrial base. To make matters even harder, that angst would be concentrated in a swathe of regional Queensland seats that Labor needs to either win or hold to win government.

Fail to address the concerns about regional jobs and Labor risks losing its important blue-collar base and activating a vicious pro-mining counter campaign. Fail to go far enough in opposing the mine and the Adani battle lines will be re-laid on Labor’s left flank, the Stop Adani campaign a potent tool in wrestling inner-city seats from pragmatic Labor progressives to the Greens.

It all comes down to risk and reward.

Findings from this week’s Essential Report show why the issue is so wicked, while providing some clues on a way through for federal Labor.

There is no denying that simply talking about the mine in the context of much-needed jobs – as proponents have – is a winning argument, particularly in Queensland where a regional jobs crisis is not just hypothetical.

But when the cost of the mine on tourism and renewables, not to mention the impact on climate change, are entered into the equation, the mine is seen a threat to jobs across the broader Queensland economy. Same group of voters, different propositions, drastically different response.

It is this reframing that is the heart of Labor’s efforts to create a Queensland jobs policy, with an already announced $1bn tourism package funded from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund – a similar ticket price to the proposed taxpayer-funded rail line for Adani but with nearly four times as many jobs.

Assuming that Labor can land its broader jobs proposition and move to formally oppose the Adani mine, the focus will quickly shift to the rest of the Galilee basin. This has always been the main game for the environment movement: keeping one of the Earth’s largest remaining deposits of coal in the ground.

For them the critical questions become: should the Adani project be opposed by Labor? Will the focus immediately shift to the rest of the basin? After all, if it’s good enough to oppose Adani, what about the other mines?

This is where the risk and reward equation shifts to the Greens and the broader environment movement. And again this week’s Essential Report may provide some guidance.



The responses show support for coal expansion as a self-evident good, even subject to environmental approvals, is a thing of the past. Sorry, coal lobby and your shiny clean coal ads, we are not buying any more.

But these findings also serve as a warning against the overreach of an immediate blanket ban on coal development in the Galilee basin.

While that may be the long-term campaign objective, these findings reinforce that the more effective way of winning the debate is using the Adani model – focus on the specifics of the project, the proponents, the backers and the funding arrangements.

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Given the economic and environmental cases against coal expansion, plus the fact the two most likely Galilee developers are Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart and our homegrown political huckster Clive Palmer, the targets for ongoing Adani-style campaigns are ripe.

Like most journeys, the battle to defeat coal expansion will be won one step at a time, not by demanding the industry’s immediate shutdown but by applying the rigour and pressure employed in the Stop Adani campaign.

And herein lies, in my view, the progressive accommodation that will defeat the coal lobby and avoid the cycle of defeat that has characterised the last decade of energy policy.

Labor would formally oppose the Adani mine, vow to act in government to prevent it and sign up to similar environmental and economic criteria for any future mines in the Galilee basin. The Greens would continue to campaign against coal but shift their political attention away from progressive Labor candidates and towards vulnerable Coalition MPs. And the broader movement would unite for an election campaign that would repudiate the coal lobby and their political acolytes for good.

I’m not one to cast specific blame for the failure of the ETS in 2010. Kevin Rudd brought the Greens to the table too late in the piece, convinced they had forced the Turnbull negotiations to the centre. The Greens rightfully felt entitled to push back when presented with a climate fait accompli that fell so far short of their ideal. When the time came to deal there was no place to land.

Rather, what both sides were guilty of was a lack of imagination; that a failure to land a deal would open the way for such a brazen clawback by the deniers, the polluters and the opportunists. The belief that progress was inevitable ultimately ensured it was not.