The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, is continuing to welcome the jobs that would be created if the controversial Adani coalmine proceeds, despite the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, saying over the weekend it would be a “miracle” if the project went ahead.

Shorten told reporters on Monday that, if the Adani project cleared all the regulatory hurdles, “then all well and good”.

“There’s no point having a giant coalmine if you wreck the reef but, on the other hand, if the deal does stack up, if the science safeguards are there, if the experts are satisfied, then all well and good and there’ll be jobs created,” the Labor leader said on Monday.

Shorten restated Labor’s longstanding arguments that the federal government should not be subsiding the project.

“The case for lending a multibillion-dollar Indian coal company, the case for lending them a billion of Australian taxpayer money, that is not one that I would be up for,” Shorten said. “I think the deal has to stand up on its own two feet and it shouldn’t be subsidised by the Australian taxpayer.”

During an interview with the ABC on Sunday, Butler was less noticeably sanguine about the Adani project than the opposition leader.

The shadow climate change minister observed “the demand for thermal coal exports around the world is in rapid decline and I think instead we should be talking about other economic developments and job opportunities for north Queensland”.

Butler said the Turnbull government had become “chained” to the Adani development “for ideological reasons” and he said the Queensland government had been pushing ahead with hydro and solar developments.

He said the “assumptions that are underpinning Malcolm Turnbull’s view of the Adani project just bear no relationship to the reality of what’s happening in India”.

“You simply need to read their electricity plan for the next 10 years that was released in December,” Butler said. “It says a couple of things. It says that they won’t be building new coal-fired power stations over the entire decade. Instead, they’ll be building about 350 gigawatts of new solar and wind power.

“That’s the equivalent of seven Australian electricity systems. The entire Australian electricity system.

“But, crucially for the Adani project, what the Modi government has also said is that they intend to phase out thermal coal imports entirely by 2020.

“The energy minister from India was saying this in speeches while Malcolm Turnbull was in India earlier this month.”

Butler said it would be a commercial decision if the project ultimately proceeded and he argued banks shying away from funding new coal developments were making commercial decisions based on the outlook in the thermal coal market, “particularly in India”.

A number of senior government ministers have blasted a recent decision by Westpac to impose tougher restrictions on lending to new coal projects.

Butler said it was time for people to be honest about the project: “There is no demand for additional thermal coal imports.”

Rather than welcoming new Queensland jobs, Butler said the reality was the Adani project would displace jobs elsewhere.

“Indeed, the demand for thermal coal exports from Australia is actually in decline and if, by some miracle, probably because Malcolm Turnbull throws a billion dollars of taxpayer funds at this project, it ends up starting, it will simply displace existing coal operations elsewhere in Australia,” he said.

“There will be jobs lost elsewhere in Queensland or there will be jobs lost in the Hunter Valley.”

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, declined to say on Monday if she agreed with Butler that it would take a “miracle” to see the Adani project gain necessary finance. But she emphasised the importance of the project for regional employment in Queensland.

“We know how important this project is for regional jobs,” she said. “I’ve just come back from Townsville. Townsville is very excited about this project going ahead, about the jobs it will create.”

But Palaszczuk also called for commonwealth backing under the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility for a new state proposal for a hydroelectric power station powering more than 30,000 homes at the Burdekin Falls dam in north Queensland.

“I mean this is a $5b infrastructure fund that has not had one single cent out the door … We’ve got a plan and I want [Malcolm Turnbull] to accept our plan.”