General News
22 January, 2025
Mayor wants help for junior miners after collapses costs town millions
Greg Campbell says the closure of three small mines has left Cloncurry owed millions of dollars.
Cloncurry is suffering from the sudden closure of three mines in 2024 and mayor Greg Campbell wants more government assistance to help junior miners.
He said Cloncurry businesses were reeling from unpaid invoices worth millions of dollars and workers were owed tens of thousands of dollars in entitlements.
Cloncurry Shire Council is also owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rates
Cr Campbell believes the fault lies with the onerous government approval processes placed on the resource sector that jeopardises the economic viability of new projects before the machinery has even rolled onto the mine site.
Some of the challenges include significant environmental bonds, bureaucratic hurdles, and access to reliable supplies of water and power.
The mayor said it was urgent for the new state government to review the costly amount of red tape emerging miners are forced to wade through prior to commencing operations.
He said policy revisions were needed to ensure the resource sector and its surrounding business community can have some level of confidence that projects can survive their proposed mine life.
Cr Campbell drove to Mount Isa on Friday for a face-to-face talk with Premier David Crisafulli where they discussed public policy over a glass of water.
The mayor told North West Weekly that he felt the Premier was responsive to his calls and committed to meeting again with him in Cloncurry in the near future.
“The Premier’s focus was most likely on the Glencore closure in Mount Isa – and that’s reasonable – but I wanted to ensure that the Premier knew the impact junior miner closures have had on Cloncurry,” he said.
“The difference is that any business affected by the Glencore closure is going to get paid – but a number of junior miners in our shire that closed or went in administration around Christmas time have left individual workers out of pocket for tens of thousands of dollars in wages owing, while small businesses have been left with unpaid invoices worth in the millions of dollars.
“I think there needs to be government revisions to the framework around approvals for junior miners. The state has a fairly strict environmental bond system requirement where miners have to stump up a lot of cash.
“The environmental bond in itself soaks up a lot of expense that could be spent on getting the project up and running.
“We want the environment protected but there is no protection for individuals or businesses affected by these sudden closures.
“It is probably why some of these projects are so economically tenuous from the start, because they have so much of their cash tied up in a bond.
“And then they use small business and the employees like a bank and if the project goes bust, they are the first ones that don’t get paid.
“This is not acceptable. I would rather these junior miners did not come to our shire if they are going to just end up hurting our people.”
Association of Mining and Exploration Companies acting director Kate Dickson echoed the concerns raised by Cr Campbell.
She said “time consuming” and “costly” environmental approval processes remained among of the biggest obstacles reported by resource companies.
“Junior minerals explorers and miners are facing challenging circumstances, with an overall increase in the time and costs required to get projects off the ground,” she said.
“Undoubtedly (environmental approvals) are an important and essential step, but the delays and duplications currently experienced by companies makes it harder to take advantage of the international demand for our minerals.
“Queensland is a stable and environmentally sustainable jurisdiction to do business, but we need to ensure we don’t take that for granted by placing more and more demands on companies, especially the junior end of the market, with smaller teams than the majors.”