"The chief executive of Adani’s Australian mining division, Lucas Dow, rejects concerns that Carmichael will create any damage to Australia—or to the world. "

There was a recent incident where environmental damage has been caused by the same company at the same port they'd use for the new mine:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/adani-faces-multi-mil...

Adani's use of the British Virgin Islands as a tax haven (backing up cam_|'s point about profits from Australia's massive mineral deposits flowing overseas):
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-02/adanis-tax-haven-ties...

The above is relevant to current politics as multi-national tax avoidance / evasion / minimisation has been a hot topic in the last 12 months.

Australia's "leadership" has really dropped the ball on preparing Australia for a changing economy, and it's the people that depend on coal for their day-to-day livelihoods (not the fucking investors) that are left holding the bag. There is no national plan with how to deal with displaced miners (as far as I know).

The Labor party (not to say they're overall much better than the current government at decent leadership) tried to improve Australia's communications infrastructure with their Fiber to the Home NBN project, but that's now less than a shadow of what it could have been, and the political will to repair it just doesn't exist. Add to that the recent laws about mandatory data retention and legislating the ability to secretly force developers to add backdoors into their software, and Australia's reputation in the growing "digital economy" stakes has being going in the wrong direction for nearly a decade.

Australia, with it's plentiful sunshine and wide open spaces had an opportunity to lead the world in renewables, particularly solar. Nope, fumbled that too. For the last seven years there's uncertainty around government policy and funding for solar and wind farms, so there just aren't the number of projects that there would have been with a bit more federal encouragement. Much of what's been built in the last few years has been a result of progressive state governments.

Australia got the biggest lithium battery in the world in a well-publicised deal with Tesla / Elon Musk. The Prime Minister and his party ridiculed it rather than celebrating being the leadership of a progressive country - because it was implemented by the state, not federal, government. That's how pissy Australian politics has become.

Ironically, agriculture is another of Australia's great strengths, and that's already feeling the effects of climate change with the increasing frequency of "once in a hundred years" scale floods in Queensland, and almost annual EL Nino and La Nina weather patterns (which are the two extreme ends of the spectrum). Not that agriculture is particularly environmentally-friendly, depending on what agriculture it is, but it's a more permanent economic base than minerals.

There are too many powerful people in Australia who got to where they are because of, primarily, coal. It's understandable that they're defending it to the hilt, it's human nature to cling to what you know. Unfortunately, in this case, as a group they're powerful enough to hold back the entire country and only an election has a chance to loosen the grip just a little bit. Evidence of the dangers of being a one-trick-pony too successfully for too long.