Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Michael Roche has urged the state Treasurer, Curtis Pitt, to take the time to listen to comments made by New Hope Group managing director Shane Stephan on SBS earlier this week.
The request comes after Mr Pitt talked about his desire for resource projects to deliver jobs for locals in media this week.
Mr Roche said Mr Stephan’s comments on the Insight program earlier this week “summed it up nicely”.
“We need it up and running for 2017-18 and that’s why we need the mining lease granted for mid 2016, to guarantee continuity of employment for those people. 435 jobs, that’s a lot of families, there’s no fly in fly out, people live in the district. They contribute to the district, their children go to the schools, in and around the district. To take that away from the district would savage the economic prosperity of that district and its future,” Mr Stephan said.
Mr Roche said he fully expects the green activists’ “bag of tricks” will be deployed against the continuation of the continuation of the New Acland Mine and the 435 jobs for locals it can deliver.
“Co-author of the anti-coal strategy document, ‘Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom’, Drew Hutton of Lock the Gate, has this week announced he has called on the Crime and Corruption Commission to get involved. This is no more than a variation on the activists’ ‘disrupt and delay’ strategy, using litigation, to hold up coal projects,” Mr Roche said.
“The difference of course with New Acland is that there are over 300 locals working at the mine right now, people who won’t have a job when the currently approved mine footprint runs out of coal in 2017-18. But the mine creates many more jobs.
“We saw on the Insight program a local maintenance and earthmoving business owner, Dave Cooper, speak of the 30 people he employs courtesy of the mine.”
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