Future Resources: Industry can have bright future in net-zero world

Despite its enormous economic importance and global success, the Queensland resources sector faces an enduring and serious problem, writes the Editor.

• Watch live: Future Resources Qld

The aim of our Future Queensland: Resources editorial and event series has been to reveal the truth about the contribution of the too-often maligned industry to Queensland.

Our aim was to explore the sector’s outlook and to showcase the economic, employment and innovation it brings to the state.

There is, after all, no bigger, more important sector to Queensland than the resources industry. And indeed the figures are remarkable. The sector directly delivers more than $85bn to the state economy and employs nearly 80,000 people – and 70 per cent of those jobs are in the regions.

The industry is also critical for the state’s southeast. Brisbane is, in fact, our state’s biggest resources town – with one-in-four residents of the capital in a job supported by mining and energy.

This story is part of The Courier-Mail’s special Future Queensland: Resources series that reveals the truth about the contribution the much-maligned resources industry makes to Queensland. You can read all of our coverage on the special topic page here.

The sector directly and indirectly supports more than 182,000 jobs and earns the city almost $40bn annually – five times more than any other area of the economy.

The sector also underpins the state’s finances and has for decades. Resources royalties – much if from coal – have raised $66bn for the state over the past decade alone. That’s 10 per cent of the state’s total revenue; the equivalent of 50 new hospitals, or more than 700 primary schools. (Or more than nine times the budgeted cost for hosting the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics.)

But for all that, and despite its enormous economic importance and global success, the Queensland resources sector faces an enduring and serious problem – an apparent lack of appreciation from many city dwellers, and government.

For the past two years the state’s coal industry has been up in arms at what Treasurer Cameron Dick calls “fairer coal royalties”, but which the miners point out are the “highest in the world” – and imposed without any consultation whatever. Mr Dick says the new industry can afford to hand over the extra $9.4bn raised in the past two years without denting employment or investment.

He says the coal industry had a profit margin of 48 per cent last financial year. And that, Mr Dick says, means our coal miners can afford to be slugged with his globally-high royalty rates and still have enough fat left over.

He is confident Queensland will continue to attract the interest of companies; in fact, Mr Dick claims they “are clambering over each other to invest in our world-class steelmaking coal assets”.

The industry has another view entirely.

Bravus’ Carmichael coal mine. Picture: Cameron Laird

The executive director of coal exporter Bravus, Samir Vora, warns the government is “choking the goose that is laying the golden eggs” – and that it is wrong for Mr Dick to think the industry is “so robust and so profitable that it can withstand all the knock-backs, rule changes, red tape and broken promises they can throw at it”.

“Investment capital is not sentimental,” Mr Vora wrote this week in The Courier-Mail. “The hard truth is that if the conditions aren’t right, capital will flow away from Queensland to jurisdictions where operating costs are competitive, and the mining industry is valued.”

Hopefully we have highlighted this fact – and others – over the past two weeks of this series, and we will do so again today when we host our Future Queensland lunch that will be attended by almost 500 people.

There will always be those who demonise the industry’s climate impact, no matter the reality of what is actually being dug out of the ground – and that our share of global production is insignificant.

Our resources industry can have a bright future in a net-zero world, but it needs the right policy settings – and the right attitude from those politicians in power – to ensure it continues to attract the investment in new projects that will be needed.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778).Contact details are available at www.couriermail.com.au/help/contact-us