Stop Adani -
whose images define the debate?
Stop Adani images
Adani images
The Great Barrier Reef
Workers in hi-vis vests
- Ted’s story – Adani video
- Meet Brenton – Adani video
- “This is Adani – Jobs” – Adani on Youtube
Works on the Adani site
- “Adani’s on track” – Adani Australia video
- “Carmichael rail network” – Adani Australia video
- “600 Tonne Mining Excavator” – Adani Australia video
- “Adani Carmichael Project Update” – 9 December 2019, Adani Australia video
Farmers and water
Once big miners like Adani and Clive Palmer suck up our water, to wash their dirty coal it's gone forever #QandA #StopAdani pic.twitter.com/Q7wSDK5Ovq
— Stop Adani (@stopadani) October 28, 2019
- “Defend our water” protest
- “Free, unlimited water for Adani, but not for local farmers?” – video from Farmers for Climate action
- “Qld is still 58% in drought. Precious water is at risk if we let Adani’s mine go ahead” – Stop Adani tweet
- “The Prime Minister is letting Adani drain QLD’s precious water” – Australian Conservation Foundation full page newspaper ad
- “Go Queensland!” – Adani Australia tweet with worker holding “Go Queensland” sign.
- “We’re working for regional Queensland families, communities, and jobs.” – Adani tweet & video
- New Adani contract presented as ‘another major win” for regional Queensland – Adani tweet
- “Thank-you Queensland” – Adani image of man with green ‘go’ sign in front of mining trucks
- “You backed us, now Adani is backing your team” – Adani support for North Queensland Cowboys NRL team.
The ‘public image’ of contractors and institutions considering working with Adani
The combination of people power and cultural power has been central to Stop Adani’s successes.
Social movements may lack financial clout, however they can exert huge influence over major financial institutions that want to avoid reputational damage from their public image being aligned with Adani.
Visual images have been a key way that the movement has exerted this kind of cultural power.
- Imagery of mining trucks – “Some of the largest members of the Adani Australia workforce ready to start work at the Carmichael Mine”.
- Full page advertisement from Qld Resources Council and CFMEU-ME featuring imagery of heavy machinery – and a school classroom with a message about royalties – and a slogan “Let’s not sacrifice jobs and opportunities for all Queenslanders just to satisfy extreme green activists”
- “We can’t get enough of this view” – Adani tweet
The Stop Adani Convoy
Led by veteran environmental leader and former leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, the Stop Adani convoy was designed to ‘travel the length of Australia, holding public meetings and rallies en route to the Galilee Basin’. Brown wrote, ‘Having visited the mine region, we plan to move on to Canberra in May to question whether Australia really wants to back pro-Adani candidates in the federal election’.
Bob Brown recalled how stopping the damming of the Franklin river in Tasmania in the early 1980s had seemed impossible given the wealth and power of the mining industry, yet a people-powered movement had prevented it. People from across Australia had made the journey to Tasmania to blockade the proposed dam – the convoy was designed to be part of this tradition of protest.
“Southern greenies telling us what to do”
Liberal National Party Senator Matthew Canavan responded:
“Bob and his band of southern activists think they know better than the people of regional Queensland.”
“So Bob Brown is driving from one end of the country to another with a heap of his vegan, stop Adani and union activist mates to tell us in Central Queensland what to do.”
Adani posted a tweet with video from a rally in Clermont, a regional town visited by the convoy, arguing ‘Regional Queenslanders have been crystal clear on their support for coal:
A people-powered movement, and its “stop” sign
- “Meet Trish, Site Administrator for our Carmichael Project.” Adani video
- “Meet Brenton”, the Infrastructure Package Manager for the Carmichael Mine Project.
- Hundreds of people gather in Mackay to show their support for the coal mining industry -video shared by Adani
- Queenslanders unite rally in support for industry in regional Queensland including mining, agriculture and fishing – Queensland Resources Council tweet with video of the rally.
Community members and public figures opposing the mine
Image politics – some issues
Image politics is important in the politics of Adani. Images are part of the Stop Adani movement’s day-to-day work, and they- shape the ‘climate of opinion‘ about Adani
- help create a ‘political climate’ where the Stop Adani movement’s goals can succeed.
Some questions that arise
Focusing on the role of images in the politics of Adani raises some questions:
- If image politics was taken out of the equation, what would be happening in the politics of Adani?
- What is the place of image politics in the theories of change which shape the work of the climate movement?
- What role did images play in the minds of different groups of voters in Australia’s 2019 election?
- What kinds of images are successfully challenging pro-Adani images in the areas where support for Adani is at its strongest?
- Thinking in terms of a ‘battle of images’, what are the links between images of Adani and the Stop Adani movement’s overall strength?
“Increasingly, the electorate is thinking politically, not in terms of policies but of images…
In and through images, fundamental political questions are being posed and argued through.
We need to take them more seriously than we do.”
– Jamaican -British cultural theorist Stuart Hall