https://www.afr. com/politics/federal/why-australia-s-miners-are-so-alarmed-by-albanese-20240910-p5k9ae
Opinion
Why Australia’s miners are so alarmed by Albanese
The powerhouse industry is aghast at the government’s policies on industrial relations and environmental changes and has broken diplomatic cover to say so.
Jennifer HewettColumnist
Sep 10, 2024 – 5.19pm
No more discreet silences or politely guarded commentary. The mining industry has had enough. Anthony Albanese may have been the official guest of honour at the Minerals Council annual dinner in Parliament House Monday, but he was also a stationary target for the industry’s increasing frustration with Labor’s policies.
MCA chief executive Tania Constable was determined not to miss. Frequent outbreaks of enthusiastic applause at her fiery address reflected the general mood of the room.
Tania Constable, Minerals Council of Australia chief executive, in Canberra on Tuesday. Alex Ellinghausen
At the main table, Albanese sat through it po-faced. The Prime Minister didn’t even bother to adjust his own subsequent speech to respond to such a strong and direct attack on his government.
That sense of top-level disengagement will only aggravate the industry more.
The background was that the Prime Minister’s office had circulated his planned speech earlier,
ready for reporting in publications like
The Australian Financial Review on Monday.
It contained lines that mining executives gathering in Canberra found deeply insulting as well as incorrect. The speech included the argument that Australian miners didn’t need to cut wages or cut corners to be successful and shouldn’t listen to those “talking Australia down” by saying they couldn’t compete with other countries.
For an industry rightly proud of its high safety standards and high wages, this only emphasised the growing gap with Labor’s vision and version of Australian mining’s many successes and challenges. Constable toughened her speech to reflect some of that simmering industry anger.
The angst about this Labor government is not yet as explosive as it was at the dinner in June 2010, after which Prime Minister Kevin Rudd introduced Labor’s resources rent tax. Rudd pulled out of the Minerals Council dinner at the last minute, instead inviting a handful of CEO’s for a “frank” chat at the Lodge beforehand.
The mining executives went to the parliament house dinner further enraged by Rudd’s refusal to listen to their concerns. This episode only intensified the industry’s determination to fight hard. Rudd’s shaky hold on the Prime Ministership was over within weeks and his replacement Julia Gillard quickly watered down the mining tax.
The accumulated layers of Labor’s changes are weighing more and more heavily on an entire industry.
This time around, general industry exasperation with Labor’s agenda has been more muted. But how best to counter the government’s approach has been a matter of intense debate among senior executives.
Miners are keenly aware of the need to protect their social licence to operate in a nation where the industry’s economic contribution and sophistication are little appreciated outside mining
states like Western Australia and Queensland. The industry is desperate to get the message out that mining is vital to the future of every Australian.
But it’s primarily BHP that has been public in its criticisms of Labor’s industrial relations changes and the risks of its environmental reforms duplicating and delaying already
complex state processes.
That has allowed the government to suggest the complaints are really just due to BHP’s unhappiness with Labor’s “same job, same pay” laws restricting its ability to use a separate production and maintenance workforce employed on different terms and wages.
Even Resources Minister Madeleine King singled out BHP last month for peddling “hysteria” and whingeing about Labor’s industrial relations changes rather than working productively with a Labor government.
The flaw in this assessment is that BHP has just been more willing to say publicly what most other companies have been complaining about privately.
Until now, Rio Tinto has remained too traumatised by its pummelling over its detonation of Juukan Gorge to venture into public attack mode. Labor believes it can afford to dismiss Gina Rinehart’s longstanding complaints about Australia’s taxes and red and green tape, while Andrew Forrest has been more focused on the renewable energy transformation at Fortescue.
But the accumulated layers of Labor’s changes are weighing more and more heavily on an entire industry.
Canberra’s enthusiastic rhetoric about a future based on critical minerals and downstream processing, for example, ignores protracted timetables and difficulties facing any new mining projects. Nor do small miners have the deep pockets to pay for crucial infrastructure.
This concern is
compounded by falling prices this year for most minerals, including the economic powerhouse of iron ore. This comes just as Labor’s industrial relations changes will increase costs, reduce flexibility and make any offsetting productivity improvements much harder to achieve.
Big miners are particularly aggrieved that Labor seems intent on encouraging the re-unionisation of the Pilbara after the abolition of union power that regularly paralysed the iron ore industry decades ago. Constable warned that conflict was coming to every workplace across the country.
Miners are also alarmed by the recent unexpected decision from Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to block a tailings dam at a proposed gold mine in NSW, effectively ruining the project’s viability. The rationale - provided with no detail – is protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage despite the mine’s owners spending years getting regulatory approvals with no objection from the responsible local land council as well as the NSW government.
Plibersek and King will both appear at the conference Wednesday morning. They should expect an unusually sharp reception.
In a federal cabinet where individual ministers don’t seem to follow any coordinated strategy or meaningful consultation, miners are deeply apprehensive. King’s comments shocked them. They certainly don’t trust Plibersek – or Canberra’s bureaucrats – not to surprise them with more damaging decisions.
Although the government has delayed introducing new environmental “nature positive” laws, for example, it wants to push through the establishment of a new Environment Protection Agency. Miners fear Coalition opposition to this bill risks an even worse outcome if Labor then does a deal with the Greens to pass the Senate.
Little wonder the industry feels stuck between a political rock and a hard place. Hold the political applause.
(20min delay)