FEDERAL Member for Dawson George Christensen has claimed the Carmichael Mine, and the resulting Abbot Point expansion, will make for a cleaner environment.

Speaking in response to the Australian Conservation Foundation's court challenge of the mine's approval, Mr Christensen said Australian coal was cleaner.

"The choice isn't between burning coal and not burning coal," he said.

"The choice is between mining low-ash content coal in Australia, under strict environmental conditions and monitoring and creating Australian jobs in the process, or mining dirty coal overseas, with no environmental conditions to speak of and using cheap, exploited foreign labour to do it."

Environment Council of Central Queensland community organiser Tony Fontes disagreed.

"To say this coal is cleaner than that coal is a furphy," he said.

Responding to Mr Christensen's statements that "Adani need the coal", Mr Fontes said India was in fact trying to move towards renewables.

"So to suggest that India needs to be powered by coal-powered plants isn't correct," he said.

Mr Fontes said the proposed local jobs were also a misnomer.

"That's been talked about over and over and over again," he said.

"And the only real figures that come from Adani talk about 1500 jobs, and that will be fly-in-fly-out so we're not going to increase local jobs at all."