Bill Shorten can't say he wasn't warned that his failure to back the Adani coal mine would end up costing him the election.
I told him myself.
But then again, so did thousands of others.
The warning bells for Labor were ringing loud in central and north Queensland communities long before Bob Brown rubbed locals up the wrong way with his ill-fated Stop Adani Convoy.
Ever since the end of the mining boom, places like Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone had been bleeding.
Unemployment had skyrocketed and local businesses were hurting.
Jobs is what they craved and the opening up of the Galilee Basin to coal mining promised jobs, thousands of them.
It's not to say that locals didn't care about the environment, of course they did - they just cared about their livelihoods more.
Coal communities in central and north Queensland turned savagely on Labor at the election over its mixed messages on the Adani coal mine in the Galilee Basin
Bill Shorten, with wife Chloe, was warned two years ago that Adani could cost him the election
Adani offered these communities hope.
So the more that green activists from south of the border tried to sabotage the project, tried to turn it into another Franklin Dam and make it the symbolic frontline in the fight against climate change - the more they bristled.
Adani was already well established as a political football, beset by constant delays and false starts, when I sat down with Mr Shorten for dinner on April 11, 2017.
At the time I was editor of Queensland's The Courier-Mail daily newspaper and Mr Shorten was the alternative prime minister.
He was riding high in the polls and quietly confident the top job would soon be his.
Over roasted barramundi at Brisbane's Jellyfish restaurant, I told him that Labor needed to get behind the project or they would pay a heavy price in north Queensland.
Daily Mail Australia executive editor (then editor of Queensland's The Courier-Mail) told Mr Shorten
