Adani jobs starting to flow

16 OCTOBER 2016: Adani's job advertisements in Saturday’s Daily Mercury are an early sign of a regional jobs floodgate about to open at the Carmichael Coal Project.  Jobs advertised included a Human Resource Manager for Bowen and a General Manager Health and Safety and Stakeholder Communications Manager at Adani’s regional headquarters. Adani is committed to establishing a headquarters in regional Queensland, with Mackay and Townsville the most likely candidates. Seeing job advertisements in the paper should be a real boost to confidence in the regional economy. This project is going to go ahead and thousands of jobs are going to be created. It is just a matter of how much of the benefit comes to different parts of North Queensland.In a region where jobs have suffered through a downturn in the resources industry, we would expect to see a flood of support and encouragement from the community to get this project under way. Townsville would play a very important role and stood a lot to gain from the project through its port and transport logistics, establishing a regional headquarters in Mackay made sense as it was best placed to provide mining services and workers. Mackay is well located and has the runs on the board for servicing the mining industry, with service businesses in place and a wealth of skilled and experienced workers. But community support in Townsville and Rockhampton will no doubt be competing to secure maximum advantage for their local economies as well.The Carmichael Project was much more than a coal mine and major construction works would need to be undertaken on the port expansion at Abbot Point and building the rail line to link the mine with the port.  The Bowen community has been particularly supportive of the project because the town is desperate for jobs and the locals can see the benefits that will flow from the port expansion. There will be thousands of jobs created in construction but there will also be thousands of jobs sustained through many years of operation.The extreme greens keep reminding us how big the Carmichael Coal project will be and an operation of that magnitude simply can be constructed and operated without creating and sustaining thousands of jobs.  Anti-mining activists have had more enough opportunity to have their say and their arguments are starting to become a joke. It’s time for them to get out of the way of these jobs that the community so desperately wants, stop playing ideological games and actually do something constructive to help the environment.