Photo: Mackey Conservation Group
By SAT News Desk
Melbourne, 28 October: In a move to gear up public opinion in its favor with ads headlined “No More Delays! We Want Work.” in Queensland The Adani Group is facing flak from a prominent environment group for his controversial Coal mining project for using Getty stock images in this advertising campaign.
Coordinator of the Mackay Conservation Group, Peter McCallum, says the Getty stock images The Adani Group used today (27 October 2016) in their Queensland advertising campaign, to represent angry locals, is “true to form and just another chapter in Adani’s sustained campaign of misinformation in a desperate attempt to build support for its controversial mining project”.
The ad campaign (see photo), running in state and regional papers, employs a stock Getty image of a “Large group of serious business people looking at the camera (see photo)”.
“Adani couldn’t even find real people to go into their ad campaign. Adani’s stock and trade is misinformation and this ad campaign is no exception,” said Mr. McCallum.
“The foreign owned miner continues to claim its project would create 10,000 jobs, when evidence provided in court, under oath, by Adani’s economic witness revealed it would only generate 1,464 additional jobs.
“Even with the port and rail line factored in, the project will only create a maximum of 25 per cent of the jobs Adani claims,
“Frustrating court action is another of Adani’s catch cries, yet our case resulted in the Environment Minister conceding that he made an error in his approval of the mine and the court then set it aside.
“Scrutiny by the courts has unveiled Adani’s habit of making misleading claims and doing poor environmental assessments, and has at the most delayed the project by one to two years.
“Adani is again manipulating communities this week to obtain discounts and subsidies from local governments, by playing regional cities off against each other to host the company headquarters.
“This foreign owned company, headquartered in Gujurat, doesn’t care about locals, our environment or the Great Barrier Reef, it cares about its profits. This is symbolized by the fact it couldn’t even find real people for this latest ad campaign.
“If we were to run newspaper ads we’d have no trouble finding Mackay residents, Indigenous representatives, farmers, reef scientists and tourism operators to have their photos taken.
“Adani can splash all the money around it likes, but at the end of the day the mine must stand on its own two feet, not be rushed through by governments bullied into action and acting against the best interests of Queensland locals and our precious environment,” Mr. McCallum said.
