Former shareholder here and SA resident. I’d be cautious thinking the Liberal Government is likely to be any more pro-mining than Labor. The Liberals have actually shown in the past few years that they are very susceptible to environmental and local campaigns with the ban on fracking in the South East of SA. Farmers are a key constituency for the Liberals with the National party not really having a presence in SA.
Labor was very much pro mining investment, pro gas and even tried to get the nuclear waste dump debate going in the last term (the Liberals were non committal on a dump and happy to shoot down the idea when initial public consultation fell over). Of course Labor didn’t do too well with power infrastructure and that is clearly something mining companies would be worried about in SA (BHP has openly stated it is a concern).
Maybe the Liberals previous positions on some of these issues was just because they were in opposition and now they’re in power they’ll have a less opportunistic attitude.
Anyway I don’t think it makes too much difference to the project who is in power. It’s always been about the copper price and financing. The few farmers were the least of the worries getting it off the ground.
RXM Price at posting:
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