Malcolm Turnbull has slammed Labor's jobs tour of Queensland as a farce because of the opposition's stance against a taxpayer loan for the Adani Carmichael mine project.
Labor insists the project can go ahead without the government giving its Indian proponents any money to build a railway line.
Adani will apply for a $900 million concessional loan from the government's Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund to help build a rail line connecting the central Queensland mine and the Abbot Point port.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten insists he wants Adani to succeed, but says it has got to stand on its on merits.
"The Australian taxpayer should not be an ATM for Indian coal mining companies," he told reporters in Yatala, Queensland.
The prime minister, who met with Adani co-founder and chairman Gautam Adani earlier in the week, accused Mr Shorten of undermining the huge project that would create "tens of thousands of jobs".
"He lacks commitment, conviction and character on this," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Mumbai.
"You can't walk both sides of the street on this and what he's done is made his whole Queensland trip into a farce. He's exposed it all as being nothing more than a bit of disingenuous show business."
But Labor says Adani has previously conceded the rail funding is not make or break for the project.
If Australia didn't sell its cleaner, low-ash coal to India, the subcontinent would look elsewhere such as Indonesia or South Africa to fill its demand.
"If we stopped exporting coal tomorrow ... there would not be one tonne less of coal burnt in the world," Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Adani had told the prime minister during their half-hour private meeting he understood the loan application would be independently assessed.
The prime minister also gave the company an assurance an issue around native title agreements for the Carmichael site would be resolved quickly in parliament.
Meanwhile, dozens of protesters rallied against the Adani coal mine project outside the Indian High Commission in Canberra on Wednesday.
They carried placards saying "don't let Adani burn our future" and "coal is so last century".
