Katter’s Australian Party MP Robbie Katter says the Queensland government isn’t doing enough to safeguard the future of the Mount Isa Copper Smelter.
“It really worries me that all we are seeing and hearing is the government in Queensland saying, ‘Glencore should be good citizens because Mount Isa has been good to Glencore, ’” Katter, member for Traeger and party leader, said in a statement.
“That just doesn’t cut it.”
Katter said major projects like Harmony’s proposed Eva copper mine near Mount Isa depended on smelting capacity.
Harmony’s modelling shows the mine is poised to contribute $16 billion to the Queensland economy if it can get off the ground.
“The Eva copper mine is set to be one of Australia’s biggest producers of copper—the stuff the world desperately is chasing, yet without a power price from CopperString, and regional smelting capacity, it’s all up in the air,” Katter said.
CopperString is a major proposed transmission line project in north-west Queensland, which would involve building more than 1,000 kilometres of transmission line to power western Queensland’s mining regions via the grid, without needing the more costly locally-generated gas.
Preliminary figures on the price of electricity that would be generated via the CopperString project could also help shore up confidence in the sector.
“There’s $16 billion on the line here, but all I see are half-baked tinkering around the edges on tax, and insipid arguments around corporate benevolence,” Katter said.
“It’s accepted that the concept of shared equity in our nationally significant infrastructure is palatable from all sides, yet I fear the bureaucrats will yet again drag ministers by the ear and tell them that short-sighted cash injections are the only way to go.”
Katter said leaders needed to handle global companies like Glencore “fiercely.”
The member for Traeger told a Meeting of the Mines event in Cloncurry on Sept. 16 that it was back in 2007 that the government released their plan for the north, including the need for affordable power and ability to realise our natural resources.
“Nearly 20 years and many reports later has passed, and the dial has barely shifted. We still need affordable power, and we’re still hamstrung by fundamentally dysfunctional policy settings,” he said.
“Governments have been all talk, and it’s high time they had a crack.
Government to Consider All Options
In state parliament on Sept. 16, Katter asked whether the premier would introduce legislation to place the smelter into government-appointed administration to facilitate alternative private ownership if Glencore ceased operations.Responding, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said Glencore had a responsibility to “come to the table” and the government would not rule anything out.
“Firstly, our offer’s been on the table for some time and the federal government have got into a position that they also have an offer on,” he said.
There isn’t a cigarette paper of difference between what the federal government want to achieve and what we want to achieve ... I say to Glencore, partnerships are about the good and the bad times, and they have done very, very well out of Queensland.”
