Editorial: Labor’s massive task to win back miners

How could the Labor Party – the traditional party of the workers – find itself so out of favour with the mining industry, writes the editor.

The World Mining Congress being held in Brisbane this week bills itself as the pre-eminent gathering of the global mining and resources industry, with more than 3000 delegates in attendance.

Little wonder then that both Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and federal Resources Minister Madeleine King are featured speakers.

Both are delivering versions of the same message – promises of support for and expressions of appreciation for the industry. But both have a huge selling job ahead of them.

Ms Palaszczuk’s government is more or less in an open war with the state’s coal miners over last year’s decision to jack up the rates on royalties once prices reach a threshold, a move miners say has so far cost them close to $6bn.

Resources Minister Madeleine King. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

And for at least the past two federal elections, Labor – led by loser Bill Shorten in 2019 and winner Anthony Albanese last year – has failed to convince voters in key Central Queensland mining electorates that the party has their best interests at heart.

How could this happen? How could the Labor Party – the traditional party of the workers – find itself so out of favour with an industry, which, according to Ms King, employs one quarter of a million Australians directly and more than a million indirectly?

The reasons, we’d suggest, are twofold and fairly obvious.

The first is the generally lacklustre support of the industry offered by both state and federal governments in response to the relentless demonisation of coal – Queensland’s most important export – by all those insisting decarbonisation isn’t happening quickly enough.

The second is the tendency of government treasurers to see the mining sector as a goose with a near infinite capacity to lay golden eggs.

Ms King noted in her address that in 2020-21 Australia’s biggest resource companies paid nearly $30bn in taxes, or nearly a third of the corporate tax collected by the federal government that entire year.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: David Clark

In Queensland, Treasurer Cameron Dick has meanwhile collected an additional $5.7bn in just one year by introducing what the industry now claims are the world’s highest coal royalty rates.

That’s good news for government coffers, but Mr Dick should heed the warning that Minerals Council of Australia chief Tania Constable will issue at the congress today: that “short-term tax grabs will lead to long-term failure”.

She will warn that “opportunistic short-term increases in royalties” that are painted as “politically acceptable budget repair” by the politicians are actually among the greatest challenges facing the critically important mining sector.

What, then, can or should our federal and state governments do to bring peace to this currently fractious relationship?

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable will address the World Mining Congress in Brisbane on Tuesday. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Ms King said in her remarks: “We must do more to help Australians understand that our resources sector provides significant economic benefits to our country.”

But the challenge is that her strategy here will only work if the government itself commits to wholeheartedly selling the message.

At the state level, Ms Palaszczuk will use her address to the congress on Tuesday to unveil the state government’s new Critical Minerals strategy, designed to “position Queensland as a global leader in delivering the critical minerals the world needs to move to a net-zero emissions future”.

It includes making rent for new and existing exploration permits free for the next five years, investing $5m to explore remaining mineralisation in mining waste, and $8m for scientific research into circular economy initiatives.

These are all positive steps and presumably welcomed by the sector.

But it is small beer when compared with the billions of dollars the state is raising from its new royalty regime. We suspect the applause today will be polite.

Facebook defamation payout a timely lesson

Too many people assume that anything goes on the internet; that both the law – and the unwritten ones about standard discourse – do not apply in the virtual world.

But some Queenslanders are now learning – at great personal cost – that is not the case, the latest being Zoe Anne Gooding from the northern Townsvile suburb of Bushland Beach.

She falsely accused her neighbours of being pedophiles on a local Facebook community page that had about 5000 members.

Her untrue post was live for at least 90 minutes.

Ms Gooding has now been ordered by a District Court judge to pay $280,000 in damages to her former neighbours.

And she is not alone. Lawyer Samuel Barber from Mills Oakley warns of an uptick in such cases, because “people have not realised that what they wouldn’t say in normal everyday life to each other face-to-face is exactly the same as what you shouldn’t say online”.

It seems that too many people also do not realise that such bad manners could cost you big.

It is surely time to learn that lesson.