Senator Susan McDonald fears a solution to the smelter and refinery closing may come too late

Mount Isa risks vanishing “under the spinifex” if its copper smelter shuts down, according to Senator Susan McDonald, whose grandfather helped build the mining town’s enduring success.

Mount Isa could disappear “under the spinifex” if its copper smelter is allowed to close, warns the granddaughter of the man credited with building the mine’s long-term success.

Senator Susan McDonald’s grandfather, Sir George Fisher, moved the Isa in the early 1950s with his wife Eileen, where they threw themselves into north west life and built a legacy that includes being responsible for the economic and social advancement of one the country’s most renowned mining cities.

Now Ms McDonald fears that legacy — and the city itself — hangs in the balance as Swiss mining giant Glencore threatens to shut the loss-making smelter without government intervention

“It was a town they believed in, and they threw themselves into all the community events, and the kindergarten and, the rodeo, every single thing but the mine was the heart of it, and the young men and women who came through the town, the community and the business,” she said.

“And whether it’s the Mount Isa operation itself, or whether it’s the Trekelano Mine near Duchess or Tick Hill or the Eva copper mine or Ernest Henry, they’re all parts of the same puzzle.

“The North West has got so much of my family’s, like so many other families’, blood, sweat and tears, and I understand that mines come and go, but I think that Mount Isa is more than that.

“It’s more important to the region and to the north than to disappear under the spinifex.”

The Bulletin reported on Monday that new predictions revealed North Queensland’s unemployment rate could hit 18 per cent if Glencore closes down operations in the region.

Senator McDonald sat down with the Townsville Bulletin in the wake of her party’s announcement that it would be pushing for a Senate inquiry into the future of Australia’s metals manufacturing industry.

Australia’s metals manufacturing industry is on its knees in the face of rising energy prices and crushing competition from China.

Glencore is understood to be losing tens of millions every month it stays open and says without government intervention it’ll have no choice but to close the smelter and Townsville refinery.

The urgent situation prompted the Townsville Bulletin to launch its S.O.S. – save our smelter and refinery campaign in May to urge all levels of government to find a solution.

Asked how she felt efforts were going in finding a solution to stave off an economic wipe-out for the North Ms McDonald didn’t mince her words “it’s going badly”, she said.

“I think that we are in a period where commercial developers of mines and smelters and refineries are under huge pressure, but they are more than just resource businesses.

“They are and in the case of Mount Isa, it is the building block, not just for North Queensland, but for northern Australia.

“We need Mount Isa to stay a reasonable size so that it supports the small businesses, the hospital, the schools.

“Mount Isa supports indigenous communities to the north. It supports fishermen in The Gulf and it supports the big agricultural businesses, you know, without Mount Isa to service helicopters, to be the place where you can go and get parts for your poly pipe or food that risks all of those places that right now aren’t that isolated because they’ve got Mount Isa, but the smelter and the mines means that community is viable and it’s not isolated.”

Ms McDonald said she knew her LNP colleague and Queensland’s resources minister Dale Last was working hard to find a solution

“I think we have to get a solution, but I worry that it might be too late,” she said.

Once things are undone, they’re very hard to redo.

“People are about to have to make a decision in a very short space of time, they either have to pack up their families and go to another job, or they stay, they continue investing their lives and their families, blood, sweat and tears for another generation in the town, all the sporting clubs and the community.”

Ms McDonald said she wanted more leadership as it was not “Glencore’s problem to assess the impact of the closure of the smelter” on other mines.

“At the moment, they take all of the ore. But if that smelter closes, we know about the cost of the rail from Mount Isa to Townsville. The cost of trucking all of that ore untreated, unprocessed, to put it on a boat to be refined in China or somewhere else,” she said./

“This is national interest, and I think it needs the federal government particularly because this affects all of Australia, not just North Queensland, but the state government as well.

“The two need to hold hands and commit to some very serious dollars to say, for the next 10 years, and say ‘we are going to back you’.

“We’re going to back you as the second last copper smelter in Australia to be viable and to survive, and for that community to be better than viable, for it to thrive, because northern Australia is such an important piece of the whole Australian puzzle.”

Senator McDonald, a chartered accountant by trade, said on a recent regional road trip an overwhelming message she heard was about Australians feeling “less lucky than they did”.

History shows there the two things that Australia does really well – mining and agriculture – have been neglected, Senator McDonald said.

“It’s probably the last 20 years when we kind of took our eye off the ball and started talking about things that don’t grow Australia,” she said. .

“I think this is the line in the sand. This is the fight worth having.”

Originally published as Senator Susan McDonald fears a solution to the smelter and refinery closing may come too late