Former ACF head says Bill Shorten faced party resistance but assured him Labor would take a tough line on Queensland project

Businessman and environmentalist Geoff Cousins says Bill Shorten gave him clear and repeated signals that Labor intended to harden its opposition to the controversial Adani coalmine, including promising to revoke the licence for the project if the ALP won the next federal election.

Cousins, a former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, who accompanied Shorten to north Queensland in January to explore the various policy options for the Adani project, used a television interview on Tuesday night to publicly blast him for a lack of leadership.

“Sooner or later you’ve got to take your heart in your hands if you want to be a leader,” the businessman told the ABC on Tuesday night. “You actually have to face down those people who won’t allow you to lead and say, ‘I’m sorry, this is where we’re going.’”

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Cousins said it was clear Shorten had met institutional resistance inside the party, forcing him to step back from the clear direction he had telegraphed to him in January. He noted Shorten had “made steps towards having a policy, but you can’t say those kinds of statements form a policy”.

Cousins said Shorten had been asked by journalists repeatedly what he would do in government to stop the Adani project from going ahead, “and he has stepped away from it”.

In a statement to the ABC in response to the Cousins interview, a Shorten spokesman said Labor was deeply sceptical of the Adani mine proposal and if it doesn’t stack up commercially or environmentally it shouldn’t go ahead, but “Labor doesn’t rip up contracts and we don’t create sovereign risk”.

Guardian Australia reported the Queensland sortie by Shorten in late January. After he returned to Canberra for the opening of the new political year, the Labor leader telegraphed a shift in position on Adani after delivering a scene-setting speech at the National Press Club.

In response to a question, Shorten dumped the oft-repeated Labor formulation on Adani, which was the project could proceed on its merits but should not be given taxpayer support.

Shorten hinted for the first time an incoming Labor government might attempt to stop the controversial mine. He made it clear Labor was considering the issue “closely”.

“If it doesn’t stack up economically and environmentally, it won’t get our support,” Shorten said in the last week of January.

Labor sources subsequently confirmed Labor was considering legal options to stop the project, including inserting a “climate trigger” into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, or triggering a reassessment within the existing framework using a trigger of the impact of the project on water, or on the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

With the pivot underway, Shorten jumped on a report by Guardian Australia suggesting that Adani had submitted an altered laboratory report while appealing a fine for contaminating wetlands near the Great Barrier Reef. “If Adani is relying on false information, that mine doesn’t deserve to go ahead,” the Labor leader said.

Labor’s pivot on Adani went for discussion to shadow cabinet in early February, but no decision was taken.

Internal views within the ALP have been divided from the outset about how far to go in opposing the project, with some insiders concerned blocking a project after it has been through environmental approvals process will trigger a backlash about sovereign risk, and others concerned a hardline stance against Adani will cost Labor votes in Queensland.

There have also been concerns that some of the potential legal triggers, including the options being pushed by the Australian Conservation Foundation, might not be effective.

In the middle of February, the powerful mining union declared in an interview with Guardian Australia there was no need for Labor to toughen its stance, warning there was no point in winning the Melbourne seat of Batman, which is currently in play in a by-election, while losing seats in central Queensland.

The CFMEU’s national president, Tony Maher, said if Labor took the hardline stance it was currently telegraphing, promising to stop the mine if it won the next election, then “what do you do with the next [coalmine], and the next one, and the one after that?”

“I see no reason for Labor to toughen its position,” Maher said in an interview. “Why win Batman and lose in central Queensland?

The CFMEU’s intervention was followed up a week later by the frontbencher Anthony Albanese arguing that Labor should not single out existing projects, like the Adani coalmine, that have already gone through approval processes “and then retrospectively change existing laws, which would have ramifications across the board”.

Albanese effectively ruled out Labor overhauling the Environmental Protection Biodiversity and Conversation Act as part of a strategy to boost legal options of killing the Adani project.

Shorten spent last week in Queensland coastal seats attempting to reassure blue collar workers. The Labor leader argued that his concerns about the Adani project did not mean he was negative about coal, or about the future of mining.

The Greens have been campaigning against Labor on Adani within the Batman electoral boundaries for months. As Shorten has equivocated on his stance on the project, the Greens and local activists have ramped up their ground campaign in the seat, with the vote due on March 17.