NEWSCORP columnist Peta Credlin last week waxed forth on the decision to approve central Queensland's contentious Adani coal mine.
Her theme was that Australians should understand just what this project would do for poor Indian villagers. It would supply electricity and whingeing lefties should understand that while they worried about climate change, social justice was needed.
Social justice is indeed needed for these people but the inference that Adani is doing this to help out the 250 million who do not have electricity is as wrong as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk pretending she has not backflipped on Adani since the election. Adani simply has a market for our coal in India.
Good luck to Adani. It has to make a profit, just like all businesses but to infer it is some sort of charity turning on lights for the poor is as silly as suggesting Australia should give a knighthood to the Duke of Edinburgh.
Credlin visited India and was shocked by conditions. It's actually worse than she described. Sanitation, safety and education are often missing. Some live in the fields in hovels and the filth is awful.
Electricity would help those who have the money to pay for it but free education and health are limited which ensures the downtrodden remain just that.
Credlin is former prime minister Tony Abbott's chief of staff so her zest in promoting Adani, which played such a role in Labor's election downfall, is understandable.
She is not alone in this promotion. Some mayors have elevated the Adani economic and jobs' benefits to almost magical proportions.
Adani is one mine of many and will directly employ about 1500. Miners mine and miners move on. When the Queensland gas fields opened areas boomed. Now motels are vacant and house prices have crashed. Mining royalties pay for much in Queensland but mines remain ephemeral.
