Adani’s Carmichael coalmine won’t go ahead, the Greens leader Richard Di Natale said, predicting “many, many thousands” of Australians would come together to protest any moves to stop the project.

Di Natale said he believed Australians largely stood against the Carmichael coalmine, choosing the Great Barrier Reef and the environment over the construction of what has been billed as the largest coal project in the southern hemisphere.

“Make no mistake, people right across the country are so motivated to stop this thing that if we can’t stop it in the parliament, we will stop it by standing in front of those bulldozers,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“It won’t go ahead. I am very confident of that. No financier wants to pay for it. It can only go ahead with massive subsidies – we talk about subsidies [for renewables]; what about the billion dollars that the LNP wants to throw at it? What about the royalty holiday that Queensland Labor has given the company?

“This is a disaster no matter which may you look at it and it won’t go ahead.”

Anti-Adani protesters congregate on Sydney’s Bondi beach. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA

Di Natale said he would “absolutely 100%” join in any on-the-ground protest against the mine, if it went ahead, predicting it would be as big as the protest movement which stopped the Franklin Dam from going ahead in Tasmania three decades ago.

“I’ll be more than happy to join those activists right across the country, many of whom I know are preparing, should we fail in the parliament, to ensure that we win it by standing in front of the bulldozers.”

Di Natale said it was about saving both the environment and jobs of the future, instead of a “short-term hit” he said the Carmichael mine would provide.

But veteran affairs minister Dan Tehan argued Australia could have both.

“The environmental protections that will be put in place means that you can continue to have those jobs on the Great Barrier Reef, and no government has done more to protect and make sure that the health of the Great Barrier Reef is in place than the Coalition government at the moment,” he told Sky News.

“We can have those jobs and continue to have those jobs, plus have the Adani jobs. It doesn’t have to be one or the other and this is where the Greens get it so wrong.”

Adani believes it will break ground on the crucial rail link needed to ensure the site’s coal will reach Abbot Point port soon and predicts its first coal shipment will leave in 202o.