Adani's Opposition to an Activist in Australia Appears to be on a Weak Wicket

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Two deceased war veterans were named as alleged co-conspirators in a recent submission by a com­pany in the Adani Group in a court in Australia. The somewhat bizarre filing was part of a legal battle that has been going on now for more than four and a half years between the group's mining company on the one hand and an environmental activist Benjamin Pennings, on the other.

The latest court filing indi­cates the extent to which the wealthy Adani Group will go against an individual, Pennings, who, together with many others, has been opposing the establish­ment of what was once described as the "world's biggest greenfield coal mine" project located in the Carmichael region of the Galilee Basin of Queensland in north­east Australia.

The Adani conglomerate is headed by Gautam Adani-one of India's and one of the world's richest businessmen. He is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Pennings grew up in the working-class suburbs of Adelaide and Sydney and now lives with his family in Brisbane. He actively participated in cam­paigns to stop the coal mine from coming up.

The coal mine project, which includes a railroad and a sea­port at Abbot Point, has been opposed not just by environmen­tal activists like Pennings but also by groups representing the Wangan and Jagalingou aborigi­nals. They have argued that the coal mine, the railroad and the port would damage the fragile ecology of the area near the Great Barrier Reef, a "world heritage site" declared by UNESCO (United Nations Edu­cational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

Global financial institutions from across the world withdrew from funding the mining project as a result of which it had to be scaled down to less than a quar­ter of what had been originally envisaged. India's biggest public sector bank, the State Bank of India, had planned an invest­ment of one billion US dollars in the project but that too did not materialise.

In the legal battle between Pennings and Adani, the former has been accused by the latter of trying to disrupt mining op­erations by conducting protests against the Adani company's suppliers and contractors.

On 6 December 2024, the Su­preme Court of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, dismissed significant portions of a legal case instituted by Adani Mining against 52-year-old Pennings. Presiding over the court, Justice Susan Brown labelled some of the company's claims as "con­fused and embarrassing."

More than four years earlier, on 11 September 2020, the same court had imposed an injunction on Pennings to stop him from using "confidential material" and ordered he had to take down social media posts and stop cam­paigning against the coal mine.

Ten days later, on 21 Septem­ber 2020, Pennings told this writer how his wife and children were being followed and that his home had been raided twice by "detectives" engaged by the Adani Group. This, he argued, was not merely against his right to pri­vacy but illegal at the same time.

Pennings acknowledges that he and others who campaigned against the setting up of the coal mining project were not entirely successful, although the size of the project was drasti­cally reduced.

The Adani project has re­ceived the support of politicians in Queensland cutting across party lines on the ground that many jobs have been created. The first consignment of coal was shipped from the Abbot Point to India in December 2021.

In 2023, Adani dropped the part of its claim that Pennings had unlawfully accessed secret information.In her 63-page judge­ment, Justice Brown threw out allegations that Pennings had caused two contractors to with­draw from the Carmichael coal mining project, calling them "em­barrassing" and "inconsistent".

Adani Mining appealed the judgement and made fresh pleas. In March, a different judge, Jus­tice Paul Freeburn published an interlocutory judgement estab­lishing a timeline for Pennings to file an amended defence. He said the case appeared to be "making no real progress to­wards a trial," according to an exclusive report by Ben Smee published in The Guardian Aus­tralia on 9 April.

The report quoted Justice Freeburn saying: "And so, some four-and-a-half years into the litigation, the plaintiffs have re­cently filed and served their fourth version of the statement of claim and now expect, by their proposed directions, a further amended defence, a reply and a regime for particulars and dis­closure... This is in respect of events that occurred between 2015 and 2020-that is, between five and 10 years ago."

As mentioned, Adani Mining has named two dead Australian war veterans in court documents alleging they were part of the conspiracy against the coal min­ing company to disrupt its op­erations. These veterans are Bill Ryan who passed away in 2019 and Mike Fitzsimon who fought in the Vietnam war and died in
2022.

Two other alleged co-conspira­tors have been mentioned in the court submission by Adani. How­ever, their names have been misspelt, according to The Guard­ian Australia. The publication interviewed the sons of Ryan and Fitzsimon who used very harsh language against Adani.

Pennings was quoted saying the two war veterans "heroes, dedicating their final years to protect us from climate break­down." He added: "I'm not sure what's happened that's led Adani to pick them out now, years af­ter they have passed away. It is just another twist and turn in this harrowing five-year saga."

Adani Mining put out a state­ment that its legal proceedings were "solely against Mr Pennings" and that other alleged co-conspirators were "simply named in our evidence of Mr Pennings' activities." The state­ment went on: "Any attempt by Mr Pennings or Mr Ryan's fam­ily to suggest otherwise is incor­rect and speaks to the way Mr Pennings has conducted himself throughout this case...We make no apologies for protecting our rights and the rights of hard­working Queenslanders to go about their legal and legitimate work."

Justice Freeburn reportedly said: "The proceeding has not languished through a lack of resources. The judgement of Brown J in December 2024 ex­plains that a costs statement prepared by the plaintiffs, in respect of some costs orders in favour of the plaintiff, claimed (Australian dollars) $1.1 (mil­lion)... That was described by Her Honour as a 'startling amount' given the applications occupied less than two days [of] hearing time, albeit with some level of complexity... On any view, the litigation has consumed large slabs of the parties' re­sources and the court's re­sources. It is hard to escape an overall impression that the par­ties are mired in the trenches of interlocutory warfare."

Adani claimed Pennings had "spent years trying to delay these civil legal proceedings from go­ing to trial."
However, what seems appar­ent to this correspondent is that-in Australia, India or elsewhere-financial resources matter a lot in "lawfare."

This writer had produced a 25-minute documentary film titled "An Activist versus Adani:

Ben Pennings takes on a mighty conglomerate, and wins-A story from Australia, India and Bangladesh" on 7 January 2025.

The full film can be viewed on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= xZCpdYp NVs8&t =376s and its trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Eoc3cnMZgg

[The author is an independent journalist studying the working of India's political economy and its mass media. He is also an author, publisher, documentary film-maker, producer of music videos and a teacher. For de¬tails, visit www.paranjoy.in First published in "New Delhi Post," Vol. 01, No. 01, July 2025]

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