General News
26 February, 2025
EDITORIAL: Flawed roadmap gambles with Mount Isa's future
Editor Matt Nicholls shares his views on the million-dollar roadmap for Mount Isa's economic future.
Mount Isa has a strong future but the FIFO consultants paid a big sum to put together a roadmap for the city fell short of expectations.
While it is clear that the North West needs more than just mining to line the region’s pockets, The Next Economy has produced an overly-wordy document that lacks any real substance.
Not only does it appear to have been written by someone from the Labor government, such is the roadmap report’s strong alignment with the Albanese government’s policies, but it failed to look at the future of the mining industry with any great depth.
Mount Isa was built on mining and there is a lot more life left in the minerals around our great city.
Instead of identifying ways to maximise the potential of the minerals we have in the ground, the roadmap focuses heavily on alternative and new technology.
It’s easy for an out-of-town group to come up with a plan that has such a bold vision, however it is ultimately one giant gamble.
Can Mount Isa afford to bet on new technology that is unproven?
And yes, while we need to make sure our planet has a future, the only way to make that happen is with the mining industry.
Want to produce solar panels for green energy? You’ll need mining for that.
Need lithium for your batteries? Yep, you’ll also need mining.
Copper is also a critical ingredient, as is gold and silver and other critical minerals that can be found in our backyard.
Mount Isa should welcome all new industries, but it shouldn’t forget about mining.
While there are legitimate concerns about nuclear energy and its future in Australia, it was disappointing that The Next Economy glossed over the potential for nuclear energy in Mount Isa and the North West. Instead, it virtually wrote it off as an option without any explanation.
By the end of May, Australia could have a new Prime Minister who has campaigned heavily on his pro-nuclear energy views.
If that’s the case, why isn’t Mount Isa putting its hand up to be considered as the first cab off the rank for a nuclear power plant?
Even if it didn’t get off the ground, it would send a powerful message to the world: Mount Isa is open for business.
It’s no secret that the North West has a huge stockpile of uranium that is just waiting to be dug up, while the construction of the CopperString network would allow a Mount Isa power plant to feed back into the national grid.
Instead, this city and many other major industries in the North West are reliant on gas or diesel for power generation.
That’s extremely expensive and the high cost of power has become a noose on Australian businesses and households.
If Mount Isa had access to cheap and reliable energy, companies like Glencore wouldn’t be thinking of downsizing their operations.
There are some positives in the roadmap and there does seem to be a strong appetite for start-ups to kick off in Mount Isa.
However, much of the roadmap is reliant on a parcel of land that is controlled by Glencore and has yet to be handed over.
Without the land, some of the projects are dead in the water.
Some criticism will be directed at the council over the release of the roadmap and what it contains, but it must be said that this was initiated by the previous administration. It should also be noted that the community was caught on the back foot 18 months ago when Glencore announced it was closing its underground copper mines.
The council didn’t have a plan in place to cope with the potential job losses.
However, this was a failure of previous eras of the council, who sat back as Mount Isa thrived from its booming resources and failed to de-risk the city.
The Next Economy’s roadmap, while short-sighted in many ways, at least identifies Mount Isa’s potential outside of mining.
It’s worth downloading a copy from the council website and having a read for yourself.