PLEA Network

8 February 2016, The Guardian, Queensland miners’ call for tax relief to save jobs is ‘outrageous’, say opponents. Queensland’s resources industry has called on the state and federal governments for help to save thousands of jobs after a study showed that a third of the state’s coalmines are running at a loss. The report, commissioned by the Queensland Resources Council (QRC), also found that more than half of the mines producing thermal coal for power stations were losing money. “It’s really time for government to sit down with the industry and see what we can do to hang onto the jobs we’ve got,” the chief executive of QRC, Michael Roche, told ABC radio. Roche said governments must consider what support could be given to the industry, such as tax relief. He said conditions were some of the worst faced in decades. But the anti-mining group Lock the Gate said it was “outrageous” for miners to claim more help from the state government, which he said already gave $3bn a year in various subsidies to the industry. “The industry is inherently cyclical and there is no case for industry relief. The industry should have been prepared for the inevitable downturn,” said spokesman Drew Hutton. “Mining is a long-term business and it obviously did a very poor job in managing its cashflow. The Queensland government must resist subsidising mining and rewarding them for poorly managing their businesses.” Roche estimated that 21,000 jobs had been lost in the industry in Queensland in the past two years as demand from China has slowed and commodity prices have plunged. “We would like government to think about what we need to do to protect the remaining 60,000 jobs in the Queensland resources sector,” Roche said. But Lock The Gate said the industry provided less than 3% of jobs in Queensland and that rehabilitating the landscape from the impact of open-cut coal mining in particular would create far more employment than financial relief for existing operations. Read More here