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“The billionaire Indian magnate planning to ship millions of tonnes of coal through the Great Barrier Reef is facing accusations of massive exploitation of his Indian workforce – including underpayments and exposing them to cholera.” – The Age, 5 September 2014
Hey ,
On the front page today, The Age exposed Adani for what it is. A ruthless, greedy operator with an atrocious human rights and environmental record.
On one side, gifts of silver and crystal are lavished upon Australian politicians. On the other, The Age reports that Adani pays a twelve year old boy $2.60 per day to work on a construction site for twelve hours, six days a week. It’s reported employees are paid below minimum wage, have no legal protections and have no access to toilets, meaning breakouts of cholera are common.1
Adani built a coal port in India without proper environmental approvals, displacing local villagers and destroying conservation areas.2 Unbelievably, the Australian government is trusting this company to build the world’s biggest coal port on our Great Barrier Reef.
There’s one hitch though. Adani can’t start building until they borrow around $10 billion and right now, Australia’s Big Four banks are the frontrunners to give it to them.
That’s right. Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, and ANZ are considered the banks most likely to finance Adani’s Abbot Point and its mines. This means financing dredging, it means financing thousands of coal ships through the Reef, and it means trusting Adani to do it. But the Big 4 banks are financed by Australians — with our deposits and our loans — so they have to listen to us.
That’s why GetUp members are asking the Big 4 not to fund Abbot Point or the mines that feed them, and we’re not going away until they do. Click here to get started.
Right now Adani is desperately searching for the billions it needs, and it’s already floundering. GetUp members have exposed its documented history of environmental destruction and corruption, and made national headlines doing so. Now, major international investors like Deutsche Bank can’t walk away fast enough.
Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and ANZ all have long histories of investing in big coal projects, many of them have even funded other ports along the Reef coastline. But now, for the first time, even the economics are on our side. With India and China rapidly moving towards renewable energy and away from imported coal, these monstrous developments may not ever turn a profit. 3
Without support from the Australian Banks, there’s a great chance Adani’s disastrous project will never happen. We’re going use everything we’ve got. Can you join the campaign? Here’s what we’re in for:
Together, we represent hundreds of thousands of the Big 4’s customers. Let’s find out exactly how many of their customers we are, and the awesome power we have the potential to wield. Show your bank that you won’t stand for this by signing this petition and let us know which bank you’re holding to account.
Let’s show the banks who we are: a large, diverse, passionate group of Australians from all walks of life coming together to protect our Reef. With phone calls, emails and over social media, we’ll show the banks an unequivocal, overwhelming display of encouragement to do the right thing. Most of us have been with one of these banks our whole lives and have a long standing relationship with them. If we raise our concerns in huge numbers, they’ll be left with no choice but to listen.
Once people find out about the threats to the Reef, they want to be a part of the solution, and branch managers are no different. That’s why we’ll reach out to as many branch managers as we can. We’ll empower them with great information about the threats of the development, and the financial risk posed by investing with dodgy companies like Adani. When GetUp members convinced ANZ Bank not to fund the GUNNS pulp mill in Tasmania, engaging branch managers played a major part.
Full-page ads, billboards, TV ads. Nothing is out of the question. It’s crucial we make it clear to CEOs that funding these projects means funding the destruction of the Reef. If we do this right, this could be a game changer for the way big banks invest our money. If they want to invest our money on destructive projects like this, they know we’ll be there to hold them accountable.
If you were a CEO, what would scare you more than knowing streams of lifelong customers were about to walk out the door? If the banks still won’t do rule out funding Abbot Point after all this campaigning, we’ll set them a deadline. We’ll pick a date, and let each bank know that if they haven’t committed to doing the right thing by then, we’ll take our money out of their banks en masse.
The GetUp movement is incredible, and together we’ve had some pretty amazing wins. But this time, we’re not going it alone. We’re working with Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace Asia Pacific, SumOfUs, AYCC, 350 .org, and Birdlife Australia. Our groups represent over 2.2 million Australians, all committed to protecting our Reef. Together, we won’t stop until we’ve won.
Earlier this year, you worked with groups in Germany and convinced Deutsche Bank to walk away from Adani and Abbot Point, after an incredible fundraising effort and a full page ad in the Financial Times of Europe. Then you joined campaigns targeting Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, taking your tally to three major international banks to turn their backs on the project.
Now, it’s time for our Big 4 Australian Banks to follow suit.
Convincing these banks to rule our these projects won’t be easy, nor is it likely to happen quickly. But together, between this incredible community of GetUp members and the alliance all around the country, we might just have what it takes.
Click here to sign the pledge and get started
Sam R, for the GetUp team.
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GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you’d like to contribute to help fund GetUp’s work, please donate now! If you have trouble with any links in this email, please go directly to www.getup.org.au. GetUp has recently updated our Privacy Policy, to read the policy go to: www.getup.org.au/about/privacy-policy. To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here. Authorised by Sam Mclean, Level 2, 104 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.
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[1] Concerns at Barrier Reef contractor’s humanitarian, environment record. The Age. September 5, 2014.
[2] Site visit to M/s Mundra Port and SEZ Limited Port site at Mundra and M/s OPG
Power Gujarat Private Limited. 6th December 2010. Available here
[3] $16 Billion Carmichael Mine “Fundamentally Unprofitable, Unviable” Says Finance Analyst. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. 6 May 2014
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Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt has caved to the mining industry and approved Indian mining giant Adani’s monstrous Carmichael Mine, threatnening the Great Barrier Reef.The coal mine will be the biggest in Australia. It will pollute our climate with massive CO2 emissions for decades. It will mean massive and continual dredging and dumping in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and will fill the Reef with thousands of coal ships every year.
The good news is that while Adani may have the approval, it still needs to find up to $10 billion before it can proceeed. This means the battle to protect the Reef from Adani is down to who can persuade investors, us or them.
Adani will try and convince investors to lend it $10 billion to wreck the Reef. We’ll try and convince them Adani is a company with no public support who cannot be trusted. Game on.
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 Travel Wild The Great Barrier Reef
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