Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

Wow. Adani is super scummy, and from research when they were starting construction on a big mine in Australia we knew they were structuring their tax affairs to not pay any tax here [1], but all this is something else.

They have been suing a climate activist here for millions of dollars, and as part of it they had private investigators following him, his wife, and his children, including photographing his children while they were alone on the way to and from school. They were “unapologetic” [2].

Although from what I read of Adani’s human rights abuses overseas (such as forcing native tribes off their lands to build mines and infrastructure, and complete disregard for the environmental effects of their operations poisoning nearby communities’ air and water/food sources) this is a tiny drop in the bucket of that company’s scummyness.

1. https://cdn.getup.org.au/2061-2059-The-Adani-Files.pdf

2. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/28/private-inv...

And despite the obviousness of the tax structuring and other, worse, scummy behaviour, the Australian Government at the time was determined to push ahead with clearing the path for Adani to operate what would have been one of largest, if not the largest, mines in Australia.

Infuriating.

That same government is still in power. It is the Labor government in Queensland, for anybody that is wondering.

Yes. Our biggest problem in Queensland is that Labor aren't very good, but the opposition (LNP) is much worse and are basically just an absolute joke - they were a complete disaster last time they were in power (and voted out in a huge wipeout the very next election), have a lot of far-right crazies, are incompetent and extremely ideological. Minor parties like the Greens are getting more traction because of it, and there's been a big independent movement in the last few years across the country so perhaps that will dilute Labor's power somewhat. But we'll have to see next election...

What did they do that was worse?

They went on big firing sprees around the public service, just absolute slash and burn style, huge spending cuts to the budget, reduction in services, and were getting ready to privitise a lot of public assets that bring in a lot of revenue (things that have been privitised in other states and have turned out to be disasters there, gouging people for essential services, like the power transmission networks). They under-invested in health, public transport, etc.

They'd been voted in I think because there was desire for change, and very quickly the public sentiment changed. Kind of like "oh crap, not like this"... It's very unusual for a Government to only have one term but they were booted out decisively. Since then the party seems even less competent... So they haven't been able to make much of an impact in the last few elections.

One more point is that the QLD Labour wing is much further to the right and much less progressive when it comes to coal and global warming. The vested interest in coal mining has limited a lot of the green energy push even as places like Brisbane and The Reef face some of the biggest challeges due to climate change.

That LNP government was absolutely amazing. They managed to go from absolute majority to losing an election in a single election cycle. Campbell Newman (the premier at the time) managed to pretty much piss off every voting bloc in the state. All done in three years. Cannot remember any other politician that was able to do that.

Yep - that's them.

They're also fully trans national scumbags and haven't limited their bad behaviour to just India and Australia, they don't mind a contraversal resource | energy project or three.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine

In one of those very odd Baader-Meinhof moments, I was reading about a different Indian mining company (Vedanta) today for the first time in my life. The controversies surrounding them look almost exactly like what you describe here with Adani.

I guess once you've spotted a scummy Indian mining company you start to see them all over?

> I guess once you've spotted a scummy Indian mining company you start to see them all over?

Non-Indian[1] mining companies operate in a similar way. When the mines they operate are in the global south, political and indigenous opponents to them have a habit of ending up in pieces.

Oh, it's not the executives in Toronto that are ordering organizers murdered and stuffed into oil drums - it's just the problem-solvers that their overseas branches happen to employ...

[1] https://justice-project.org/the-canada-brand-violence-and-ca...

Just to be clear here, the Toronto TSX and TSXV exchanges are home to more mining companies than any other market in the globe; as such companies listed there aren't neccesarily majority owned or controlled by Canadian citizens (although there is a huge Anglo-Australian presence there).

That said, shitty behaviour in the "global south" (or towards indigenous land holders enclaved with the US, Canada, or Australia) is common enough across the board no matter the nationalities of majority owners and board members.

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