Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Up to 70,000 jobs depend on a healthy reef. But, according to a transcript on your website, on 11 April this year you justified tipping $1 billion of public money into the ticking Adani time bomb by stating that it 'will create tens of thousands of jobs'. Yesterday your energy minister said the figure was, '4,000 direct jobs and up to 8,000 indirect jobs'. Adani itself has said that it wants to automate the project from mine to port, and its own expert witness said in court that 'around 1,464 direct and indirect jobs will be created'. Knowing that there are penalties for deliberately misleading the House, are you prepared right now to repeat your false claim that the Adani project will create tens of thousands of jobs?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. It gives me cause to ask this: does the Greens party believe, with their friends in the Labor Party, that Queenslanders should not have jobs? Or do they believe that Indians should not have electricity? Because the reality is this: India is going to need four times as much electricity between now and 2033, and they are going to generate that from many means—from renewables, from gas, from coal. They are going to use more coal in absolute terms for many years. And, if they do not import it from Australia, they will import it from somewhere else.

So for all of his sanctimony, for all of his empathy, the reality is this: the people of India are entitled to have the electricity they need; they are entitled to deliver it in the manner they deem appropriate. They will burn coal less in proportionate terms over the future but more in absolute terms for many years.