by Cheryl Adam
Early the following morning, on 17 March we leave our accommodation in Bhuj. Cousins and Zethoven have bought plane tickets. The plan is for them to enter the airport at the same time as the Premier’s arrival, ostensibly to board a plane they will never fly in. Currie and I (the backup team) are to wait outside in the airport car park just in case. The project reminds me of my police reporting days from two decades ago. Back then, I would crouch behind a hedge during a police siege having been tipped off on the old police radio. Or, in those highly charged days at the beginning of my career when writing my first book, Brothers in Arms, I would slip into jails dressed as a bikie moll with my co-author and best friend, the late Sandra Harvey, to meet with the Bandidos. Once, heavily pregnant with twins, I sat with a photographer outside a funeral parlour for five hours having been told the business transported bodies through the adjoining restaurant. Here I was back on the beat.
In the airport car park, a few souls loiter. Most of the business, however, is happening inside the terminal itself. There is a buzz of expectancy as they await the arrival of such a senior politician from Australia. Cousins and Zethoven, pushing small carry-on bags, have already entered the airport.
Typically, as this is a breaking story, as I have learned over the years, things do not go according to plan. For a start, the arrival lounge is segregated from the departures hall. Zethoven and Cousins are physically cut off from the Premier. Outside, musicians in maroon waistcoats and orange turbans are beginning to assemble. Trumpets and the steady beat of a drum pick up in tempo heralding her arrival. A pull up banner proclaiming the Adani logo is on display.
I text Zethoven. Within minutes she and Cousins are outside the terminal. The videographer then takes my phone. We have long ago decided that his SLR camera will not be useful for sending immediate footage. He can easily be anonymous among the crowd. Currie has had issues with his phone ever since we arrived in India. We now have no communication.
Palaszczuk, it is clear, is to receive a welcome fit for royalty.
The automatic doors of the arrivals hall open. A number of dark-suited men emerge first past the musicians. Leading them is a smooth-looking western man – model material – wearing Maui Jim sunglasses, a light blue shirt and what looks like Moleskins. He scans the crowd expertly. Photographer and journalists mill around waiting. Another Indian man, who looks like an Adani PR representative, also strolls out. Imogen Zethoven later identifies him as an Adani official in public relations. The Premier is immediately behind this man. The Australian entourage has been stamped with a dark red spot in the third eye. Palaszczuk, dressed in a white jacket and black slacks, looks relaxed. The television cameras begin dutifully rolling. Flanked by Jenny Hill, Mayor of Townsville, on one side and Andrew Wilcox, Mayor of the Whitsundays, on the other, Palaszczuk’s smile lengthens. The drummers’ beat quickens. Like the soundscape from an E.M. Forster movie about India, the drums become wilder and wilder until the drummer is in a frenzy. Mr PR Adani permits himself a small smile. The trumpet whines like a petulant child to a crescendo. Then abruptly it is all over. The Premier walks in that long-strided way of hers to a waiting black minivan. ‘Adani 1’ on an A4 page is posted on the back. The media gather around the van expectantly.
What a wonderful welcome it has been, says Palaszczuk now looking a little less prepared, and a little less confident. How proud she is, she tells the crowd, that her regional mayors have travelled so far to be here. She is here, she adds, to look at the port and focus on solar and agriculture. There is no mention of coal or the Mundra power plant.
In a Government statement released on 18 March 2017, she says that the purpose of her visit is all about going to the Mundra port, inspecting Adani’s solar panel plant and “much of the 40 km coastline of the port which still has the capacity to increase its current dock facility tenfold in an effort to meet the growing needs of India’s middle class.” No mention of a marine sanctuary and the coral reefs just offshore and the effect of this expansion. Oh, and chickpeas. Apparently the Premier and her Mayors had flown a quarter of the way around the world to “help Queensland famers to identify the right locations to grow the right crops to feed this enormous population.”97
Why the media release did not once mention the lucrative Adani coal deal with the mining leases already signed by the Queensland Government begs to be answered. Perhaps it was because the headlines about our visit to Adani HQ have already done the global media circuit.
“What are you hoping to achieve?” one of the media contingent probes her uncertainty.
“Well …” Palaszczuk begins, “from my point of view I want to see the port operations. I want to see exactly how the results … of agriculture and solar can benefit Queensland, but fundamentally this is purely about jobs for Queenslanders. There is nothing more important. I am not going to shy away from my commitment and my determination to do whatever it takes to get the jobs that regional Queensland wants.”
Cousins and I have meanwhile positioned ourselves at the minivan door.
“Good morning Premier,” Cousins quickly introduces himself. “I think you know why we are here … I hope you saw the letter that we sent.” Palaszczuk acknowledges this and Cousins adds in a quiet voice “that’s good …”
“Good morning Premier …” I introduce myself, “… you mentioned jobs … there are 69,000 jobs in tourism and you are single-handedly, along with the Federal Government, wrecking the reef and those jobs.”
She arcs, slightly smiling whether she recognises me or not.
The smile harbours annoyance.
“There’s no greater supporter of the Great Barrier Reef than me and my Government,” she responds.
“The Adani coal mine puts the reef at risk … that’s the problem,” adds Cousins smiling wryly.
“And you are single-handedly, along with other levels of Government, destroying the Great Barrier Reef,” I add.
Zethoven has appeared by our side. “And the Adani mine does put the reef at risk which has already suffered two back-to-back bleaching events …”
“All of you have jobs … and there are regional Queenslanders that are fighting for jobs,” Palaszczuk raises her arm and clenches her fist dramatically for emphasis.
“I’m a regional Queenslander but I don’t know how long I’ll have my job,” I say. “How many jobs will be offered by Adani?”
“Ten thousand regional jobs,” she begins turning to the waiting car.
“Rubbish …” I say.
“Absolute rubbish,” we chorus. A packet of potato crisps is wedged in the back between the two seats. A snack for the Premier on her way to the power plant. Then she is off.
We begin to walk back to our car. Moments later Imogen Zethoven calls out. Her mobile phone is missing from her handbag. I immediately call her phone. It rings out. Then Cousins calls it. This time the phone is switched off.
Everything is on her phone. Her entire life. She is aghast. A crack has shattered the promise of the morning. For several days after this, Zethoven is unable to regularly contact her office, without any of her contacts in a country far away from home. The last time she had seen the phone was inside the airport terminal when she was with Cousins. The last text she received was from me suggesting they move outside. She uses my phone to inform her office of the missing phone.
But we have footage. Back at the hotel in Bhuj, Zethoven and I scan the footage from the videographer as soon as we are able. Zethoven identifies the ‘PR man’ I had noticed and reveals that his name is ‘Raj’. She says she had an encounter with him shortly before the trip to India after a public debate on Adani organised by The Courier Mail, a Queensland Murdoch-owned daily Brisbane newspaper, at the Brisbane Powerhouse. Raj, she said, had been quite hostile to her after she had mistaken him for Adani’s CEO Jeyakumar Janakaraj and had accused her of being racist, claiming she believed all Indians looked the same. She had seen him for the first time since that incident at the airport when she was with Cousins. He had been c
harming, welcoming her and Cousins, whom she introduced, to India.
The videographer had begun filming from the moment Palaszczuk left the arrival hall. We watch the Indian band assemble and play. There are several people in the entourage including Blue Shirt. The crowd begins to move toward the black minivan and the impending media conference once the band finishes. Cousins and I move slightly off to the left towards the door of the minivan. Zethoven is standing far over to our right. As is her custom from years of travelling, her right hand protectively cradles her small black handbag slung over her left shoulder, which contains her phone. Then she looks behind her, presumably for us. Two western men are close to her. Raj is standing away from the crowd watching what is going on from the sidelines. One of the men is Blue Shirt who is behind her and the other a nondescript, grey-haired man with a slight middle-aged spread, old-fashioned glasses and the kind of finely-checked shirt you would find at a cheap department store. There is ample time to slow down the action. Checked Shirt appears to have arrived with the Premier and another woman in her early forties with pale shoulder length grey/blonde hair. Both look like archetypal public servants.
The action unfolds in less than a minute as Cousins and I wait at the minivan to begin firing questions at the Premier. Zethoven is still at the other end of the minivan when Checked Shirt turns a full 360 degrees around to face her, a strange manoeuvre given that he is looking straight at the crowd and everyone else is looking at the Premier about to give her media conference. Checked Shirt then turns back full circle to face the Premier before bending down and fumbling with his bag on the ground. Blue Shirt is behind off to her left. Behind Zethoven is John McCarthy, a journalist with The Courier Mail. Zethoven had met McCarthy when she took part in the same panel hosted by his newspaper where she had met Raj. As Zethoven realises that Cousins and I are closing in for the kill, she squeezes quite close past Blue Shirt to head for the other end of the minivan to get closer to us. Checked Shirt then abruptly leaves the crowd passing behind the Premier’s vehicle to the other side of the van where the sliding door is open. Then we have the exchange with the Premier. There had been a space of around 15 minutes between when Zethoven last used her phone and discovered it was missing. No one has been captured on the video footage (the critical time between her last using it and finding it missing) taking her phone. Zethoven filed a Police Report at the Bhuj police station that afternoon and bought another phone.
On 21 March 2017, after arriving back in Australia, John McCarthy emailed Imogen Zethoven to request an interview about the Indian trip. She replied a few days later saying she has been delayed in getting back to him as her phone had been stolen. His response was completely unexpected. McCarthy tells her that her phone was found in the Hyatt Hotel in Mumbai, 859 kms away from Bhuj, where the Queensland delegation had been staying as well as John McCarthy himself. He had thought Zethoven was also staying there. There was no SIM card inside the phone. The reason he knew this, he explained to Zethoven, is that he had been the last one to text her after the arrival at Bhuj airport, as he wanted to interview her about the Indian trip. When someone from the hotel staff opened the phone he presumed that his name had appeared on the last text. The hotel staff had then contacted him thinking he might know the owner. McCarthy also told Zethoven that Blue Shirt was a police officer.
While it is not unexpected for a head of state to spend money on security, the cost of protective security for Palaszczuk’s 11-day Indian trip from Queensland police which included visiting Singapore and the UK is on the record as AU$38,168 with three Senior Constables and one Sergeant from the Counter-Terrorism and Major Events Command.
We made the ABC news that night on 16 March 2017. Our confrontation made the front page of The Times of India, The Economic Times, Hindustan Times and a multitude of smaller newspapers throughout India as well as the ABC, The Australian, the regional Queensland Dailies, The Townsville Bulletin and The Guardian. My local newspaper, The Whitsunday Times, recently taken over by Murdoch, ignored the story. The video footage of the ambush of Annastacia Palaszczuk at the beginning of her Indian tour was shown through most of the coverage. Even my cousin in Singapore saw us on the news. The world was watching. Why are Australian Governments threatening the existence of the Great Barrier Reef? And why are they so keen on coal?
Chapter 6
The Coal King of the World
Mundra Port is the largest private port in India and is built on the northern shore of the Gulf of Kutch. Mundra is where Gautam Adani “really made his money,” Tim Buckley, Sydney-based Director of Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) told the Good Weekend Magazine in November 2017.98 It was Adani’s foothold in Mundra, “the lynchpin of his empire” that transformed him into a billionaire “off the back of enormous social inequality,” Buckley had said.
Back in August 1995, Adani had been granted clearance to handle general cargo, including LPG, and a chemical storage terminal when the Gujarat Maritime Board approved setting up a jetty at the Port of Mundra. By 1997–98, Adani, who had been importing plastic granules for his brother’s plastic-film manufacturing business, decided to move beyond trading into infrastructure. Mundra Port was his first project. The 3000 acres of coastal land had been given to agribusiness group Cargill and Adani for salt production with a jetty at Mundra.
However, according to an article about Gautam Adani in the Indian magazine Outlook Business in 2013 entitled ‘The Alchemist’,99 the deal fell through and Cargill backed out. But at the beginning it provided motivation for Adani to get into ports. Liberalisation had started and the Gujarat Government was privatising the ports as a joint venture with the state. Mundra, according to The Economic Times of India, was Adani’s “heart and soul … When he was nothing, this is where he started from.” The article went on to say that by 2016, Adani had “a string of ten ports on the Indian eastern and western coastlines.”100
Back in 1998, the first small tanker had been anchored in the Mundra port. In 1999, the Gujarat Government had released its manifesto on the industrialisation of Gujarat, focusing on building port infrastructure in 1995. Adani ventured into coal trading. The coal would land at Mundra. At this stage, he had no experience at “building anything, not even a simple building, let alone a port,” Adani revealed to Outlook Business Magazine in 2013. In 2000, the Government granted clearance for a port expansion project including a railway line. Adani had focused on this critical part of the development encouraging private-public partnerships, which allowed ports to connect to the national railway grid.
But Mundra was destined to be far more than a port. As I noted earlier, in 2003, it became India’s first multi-product port-based special economic zone (SEZ). In 2001, Narendra Modi had been made Chief Minister of Gujarat. Adani had the ability to import coal at his doorstep and it was then that he began his dream of thermal power generation.
In January 2012, the Mundra Port SEZ became known as Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZ). By the following year, the APSEZ averaged an operating margin of 71%. Three different components, the SEZ, the Port and the Power project took up approximately 6300 hectares of land according to then PhD Candidate with the Centre for Studies in Science Policy in New Delhi, Manju Menon.
In 2006, Adani entered the power generation business. At this time, the company was already the largest trader and importer of coal in India, as well as operating the country’s largest private port, Adani told Outlook Magazine in 2013. In 2009, in keeping with ‘Gujarat being open for business’, the entire area was declared an SEZ, exempting it from all taxes, levies and trade duties. Adani’s proposed waterfront development seemed to have a life of its own expanding the whole idea of just a port. In 2013, Adani put in an application for a ship-recycling facility on land dredged near its port at Mundra. At a public meeting, Adani was accused of supplying false information in its Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) by stating there were no schools within a five-kilometre radius of the project.101 Adani d
enied the shipyard had anything to do with the Mundra SEZ, but said it was “part of a waterfront development plan” which had been cleared in 2009.102
Alarmingly, the proposed ship recycling unit, at that time, was to dismantle and break up ships weighing 4000 to 16,000 tonnes – across the road from one of India’s largest marine sanctuaries – and the facility included a beaching and storage area for steel, machinery and electrical items. Concern was raised about the dangerous substances coming from older ships such as asbestos. In October 2016, according to Scroll Magazine,103 senior ministry officials began asking questions about Adani’s requested environmental clearance for the shipbreaking yard with an investment of Rs 146.8 crore. By May 2017, the ministry was processing environmental clearance for the shipbreaking yard after an expert panel allegedly ‘gave a nod’ to the project according to Scroll. In June 2017, APSEZ was given approval, according to LiveMint which confirmed this with APSEZ.104
It further added: “The beaching method of breaking ships practised along a 12-km stretch of Alang-Sosiya – hundreds of nautical miles away from Mundra Port – is often criticized for its lax safety and health aspects. Under the beaching method, which has been heavily criticized, ships are first grounded during high tide and then dismantled, posing hazards to workers and the environment.”
One recent Reuters/gCaptain News Report in May 2018 stated that 543 of the 835 large oceangoing ships were intentionally run ashore and dismantled by hand at shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan which has resulted in many deaths and created environmental hazards.105