Anglo Coal poised to quit council over election campaign

Anglo Coal is considering its membership of the Queensland Resources Council after they ran an aggressive campaign in the state election against the Greens.

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane.

International mining giant Anglo Coal is considering its membership of the Queensland Resources Council following the latter’s decision to run an aggressive campaign in the state election against the Greens.

BHP and Origin Energy have already quit the QRC over the multimedia campaign, which is designed to “put Greens last” in the inner-city electorates where the Greens stand the greatest chance of picking up more than the one seat they currently hold.

Anglo was not making any formal statements on Thursday but a company representative said it didn’t support the anti-Greens campaign and, while the company didn’t want to leave at the ­moment, it would be assessing its continuing membership of the QRC in the light of that.

“We want to play a constructive role within the QRC but we don’t agree with that campaign,” the company representative said.

The representative said that like other mining companies, Anglo was uneasy about the campaign because it targeted a political party rather than a policy.

Queensland Resources Council’s banner. Picture: Supplied

Both BHP and Origin cited this singling out of a political party as a reason for their departure, but QRC president Brent Gunther claimed the campaign was similar to ones that previously had been run by mining organisations in other states.

In the NSW election last year, the NSW Minerals Council ran a letterbox campaign in parts of the Hunter Valley, distributing leaflets that said: “The GREENS want to destroy thousands of jobs in the Hunter. IS YOURS NEXT?”

The flipside of the flyer said: “Greens policies will shut down key local industries” and urged “Protect your job — don’t vote Greens”.

BHP was not making any public comment on Thursday, but company representatives argued that the NSW campaign was on a considerably smaller scale and was part of a larger, more positive campaign on the value of the sector to NSW.

By contrast, the QRC drive has featured not only letterbox drops but also advertisements on billboards and in social media throughout an election campaign.

A large billboard has gone up beside Story Bridge in Brisbane urging “Jobs will go. Put Greens last”.

BHP representatives argued that in the NSW campaign the company was not a board member at the time and the leaflets used then were not endorsed or reviewed by BHP.

They said that by contrast, BHP was on the board of the QRC and used that position to strongly oppose the present campaign.

The Greens policy calls for a massive increase in coal royalties of up to five times what they are now, so that royalties paid by mining companies increased from the $18bn forecast over the next four years to $73bn.

Anglo, which runs two open-cut and three underground mines in Queensland, and BHP, which operates nine mines in the state in partnership with a Japanese company, would be most affected if the Greens policy were to be implemented.

BHP is the biggest contributor to mining royalties in Queensland, paying $920m into state coffers last year, meaning that if the Greens policy were to be implemented then it would be paying upwards of $4bn.

While the Greens policy is unlikely to be implemented, the QRC is worried that in the event of a minority government where the ALP had the largest number of seats, it could form government with the backing of the Greens.

In that scenario, the Greens could insist on at least partial implementation of their policy in return for support to form government.