Adani Mining Pty Ltd: allegations of "black money" and environmental degradation

“The Indian government’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is currently investigating a number of Adani Group entities, including Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), which is the ultimate holding company of Adani Mining Pty Ltd, the proponent of the Carmichael Mine, for illegally overvaluing imports of coal and capital equipment in order to siphon funds offshore, a practice that creates “black money.” A detailed report from a reliable media source also indicates that for more than a decade the DRI has also been investigating Adani Group entities for tax evasion and money laundering whilst trading in diamonds.”  

Major Reports, February 2017:

The Adani Brief

If it proceeds, the Adani Group’s Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project in the Galilee Basin in Queensland will be among the largest new coalmines in the world. The associated rail infrastructure and expansion of the coal export terminal at Port of Abbot Point adjacent to Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area would facilitate the shipping of coal through the Great Barrier Reef’s waters from the Carmichael Mine.

The Adani Brief: What governments and financiers need to know about the Adani Group’s record overseas suggests that governments and private stakeholders should give serious consideration to:

* the Adani Group’s global legal compliance record which demonstrates numerous serious breaches with adverse consequences for the environment and local people; and

* the possibility that if this track record continues in Australia, then supporting the Adani Group’s Carmichael Mine and the Abbot Point Port may expose governments and private  

  stakeholders to reputational and financial risks.

Read The Adani Brief (PDF, 1.53MB)

Read the Overview of The Adani Brief (PDF, 160KB)

View key source documents

Report/submission Type:  

Major Reports

Topics:  

Fossil Fuel Extraction

A university education and a highly paid job the road to home ownership in Australia for the masses?

The Turnbull Government’s tin ear was on full display in The Sydney Morning  Herald on 21 February 2017:

The Coalition MP tasked with tackling Australia's housing affordability problems has said a "highly paid job" is the "first step" to owning a home.

The federal Victorian MP Michael Sukkar, who is the Assistant Minister to the Treasurer and has been charged with finding solutions to the country's housing affordability woes, also pointed to his own experience in purchasing two properties by the age of 35 as an example to struggling homebuyers. 

"We're also enabling young people to get highly paid jobs which is the first step to buying a house, it's not the only answer but it's the first step," Mr Sukkar told Sky News on Monday night.

"I want to see young people like me, leave university, I was a terrible university student but I left university because the economy was so good, I got a great start and I was able to forge a career," he said.

The Liberal MP for Deakin since September 2013 and Assistant Minister to the Treasurer, 35 year-old Michael Sven Sukkar LLB, BComm (Deakin), LLM (Melb), who apparently walked straight into well-paying employment at PricewaterhouseCoopers after leaving university and eleven years later owns his own home in Blackburn and a residence in Canberra after selling a second investment property in Fitzroy.

Conveniently the Australian taxpayer is assisting Mr. Sukkar with the mortgage on the possibly negatively geared Canberra property by supplying him with $273.00 for every night he stays in his own residence while parliament is sitting – an est. $11,466 for the 2017 calendar year alone.

Even at a stretch, married to a professionally qualified wife with a business partnership in a multinational firm, Michael Sukkar’s economic progress though life is hardly typical of a couple seeking to buy their first home.

However, typically of a member of the Liberal Party he assumes almost everyone can be fortunate enough to have small business owners as parents, a good education and a well-paying job before securing a parliamentary seat with an excellent superannuation plan.

According to They Vote For You during his almost three and a half years in the Australian Parliament Michael Sukkar has voted for:

A same-sex marriage plebiscite

An Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC)

An emissions reduction fund

Charging postgraduate research students fees

Decreasing ABC and SBS funding

Decreasing availability of welfare payments

Deregulating undergraduate university fees

Increasing funding for road infrastructure

Increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts

Increasing or removing the Government debt limit

Increasing scrutiny of unions

Increasing the initial tax rate for working holiday makers to 19%

Increasing the price of subsidised medicine

Privatising government assets

Senate electoral reform

Speeding things along in Parliament (procedural)

Stopping people who arrive by boat from ever coming to Australia

Tighter means testing of family payments

Unconventional gas mining

Regional processing of asylum seekers

Temporary protection visas

And voted against:

Implementing refugee and protection conventions

Increasing scrutiny of asylum seeker management

Suspending the rules to allow a vote to happen (procedural)

Increasing Aboriginal land rights

Increasing funding for university education

Increasing investment in renewable energy

Increasing marine conservation

Increasing protection of Australia's fresh water

Increasing restrictions on gambling

Increasing the age pension

Increasing the diversity of media ownership

Increasing trade unions' powers in the workplace

Increasing transparency of big business by making information public

Letting all MPs or Senators speak in Parliament (procedural)

Letting environmental groups challenge the legality of certain government decisions

Protecting citizens' privacy

Restricting foreign ownership

Stopping tax avoidance or aggressive tax minimisation

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)

Credlin admits there was no carbon tax under the Gillard Government

Here is the audio of Peta Credlin admitting the last seven years of Australian politics is based on total crap https://t.co/ydMCWFYe66 pic.twitter.com/p1hHmrK71R

— Mark Di Stefano 🤙🏻 (@MarkDiStef) February 15, 2017

What were they thinking?

The  Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 2017:

What were they thinking? On Monday three members of cabinet called a press conference to pressure the Senate to cut the dole. That's right, to cut the dole. At just $13,750 per year plus an $8.80 per fortnight energy allowance, it's already so low the Business Council believes it "presents a barrier to employment and risks entrenching poverty." The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the research arm of the world's richest economies, says Australia's unemployment benefit has reached the point where it may no longer be effective in "enabling someone to look for a suitable job".

Even a Coalition-dominated inquiry found a "compelling case" for boosting it.

But the three ministers wanted to deny the energy supplement to new entrants on the spurious ground that this would merely remove "carbon tax compensation for a carbon tax that no longer exists". It wouldn't. The Newstart cost of living increase was cut 0.7 per cent when the energy supplement came in to avoid double counting. If the energy supplement went but the cut remained, new entrants to Newstart would be worse off than if the whole thing had never happened.

And they wanted to withhold Newstart from newly-unemployed Australians aged 22 to 25, paying them instead the lower $11,375 Youth Allowance. The under 25s would have to wait longer too – five weeks instead of the present one.

Rather than spend time arguing the merits of cutting a benefit already so low it can barely be lived on, Treasurer Scott Morrison, Social Services Minister Christian Porter and Education Minister Simon Birmingham delivered instead what amounted to a threat: if the Senate didn't cut the unemployment benefit, they might not fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

But not at first. In a burlesque twist, they opened the press conference spruiking the case for an unfunded massive company tax cut.

* Images found at Google Images