Big wheels keep on turning? Not if Labor, greens kill off New Hope jobs
When Stewart Mills looks over the line of idle machinery, he sees more than just dump trucks and excavators.
When Stewart Mills looks over the line of yellow machinery parked in a row near the nearly exhausted New Acland mine, he sees more than just dump trucks and excavators.
To him, each machine represents a mate who has lost a job.
The ever-growing line of trucks, graders, loaders and diggers, neatly parked indefinitely, represents an estimated $27m in lost wages from workers sacked in the past year. About 170 jobs have been lost while mine owner New Hope awaits a repeatedly delayed decision from the Palaszczuk government over whether it can carry on with its “stage three” expansion plans for the $900m mine on the Darling Downs, west of Brisbane.
Saddest of all for Mr Mills is the sight of dump truck 310 — sitting idle for months — the enormous Cat in which he learnt to drive when he started at the mine 13 years ago. “I was self-employed before, but I can honestly say this is the best job I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s stable, local and I’m home with my family.
“Every day you drive past this line of trucks and it just reminds me of the mates who lost their jobs. Next it could be us.”
More redundancies are expected in March as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk continues to resist repeated calls from her colleagues to approve the mine.
Ahead of the 2017 election, Ms Palaszczuk said she would await the outcome of a judicial review of a Land Court decision against the expansion. The judicial review found in favour of New Hope and the Land Court followed suit in 2018, but Ms Palaszczuk changed her mind and said approval would have to wait until all subsequent legal challenges brought by the Oakey Coal Action Alliance were exhausted.
Her intransigence has led to criticism from some of her closest confidants and union allies.
Ahead of last year’s election campaign, the mining division of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union campaigned against Labor, and federal Labor MPs Anthony Chisholm and Shayne Neumann publicly called for Ms Palaszczuk to approve the expansion. The Premier refused to budge, despite approving the Olive Downs coalmine, which was also subject to legal challenges, on the eve of the election campaign.
Ms Palaszczuk has said her government will await the outcome of a High Court appeal before considering approving the $900m, 15-year mine expansion. The court appeal, brought by the Oakey Coal Action Alliance, was heard in October. A decision is unlikely before February, which could be too late for Mr Mills.
“We’re at the point now where it’s do or die,” he said. “It’s doom and gloom every day. They (the government) have got the power to change it.” Many of his colleagues who lost their jobs have left town or started up as FIFO workers at other mines further north, taking money out of the local economy. In nearby Oakey, vacant shopfronts mar the main street and two pubs are shuttered.
New Hope recently announced 70 redundancies at its head office just a year after moving into a Brisbane central business district tower. Another 20 are expected to be made redundant by March. The company predicts the stage three expansion would create 487 jobs within 18 months and inject $7bn into the economy over its lifetime.
The mine has had some staunch critics since opening in 2003, including Sky News commentator Alan Jones. Neighbours disgruntled by noise and dust and farmers worried about loss of prime land and fearful of groundwater effects have joined forces with environmentalists to challenge the expansion in court, leading to more than a decade of legal and administrative limbo.
New Hope Group chief executive Reinhold Schmidt, who met Resources Minister Scott Stewart last month, says the delays by successive governments have caused a great deal of pain for the company and its employees.
“With the latest federal approvals, it is now over to the state government to get the project up and running,” he said.
