Photo
by Clay
LeConey on Unsplash
(A small festive season tree, with its association of the happy exchange of gifts, is dwarfed by hard, unadorned, multistorey commercial and business buildings on a cold, snowy winter's day)
Warning: I am not going to address the climate, environmental and destruction of First Peoples lands, practices, etc problems of the mining industry in this post, but those are VERY real, and should be kept in mind throughout this - which is being written as an examination-of-governance-ideas exercise.
Something I think about from time to time is the “Resource Curse” (see Investopedia, Science Direct, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Wikipedia) - which can see some nations become so reliant on an “extractive” industry (i.e., mining) that nothing is done about developing other industries/aspects of the economy.
This can lead to the nation being vulnerable to economic disaster if that mined product becomes unattractive (e.g., coal - which is being phased out [too slowly] in response to the climate crisis]) or uneconomic (e.g., some mines in WA where the market value dropped), and there is a high likelihood that the economic benefits will be limited, and may flow mostly to already wealthy elites - quite possibly outside that nation.
In Australia, where neoliberalism has facilitated the squattocracy and other ultra-wealthy elites seizing control of the right wing "media" and driving the political and social values (my suggested addition) Overton windows towards meek compliance with whatever will most benefit (most of - there are notable exceptions) those few, suggestions to move Australia’s management of extractive industries towards fairer systems (such as that used by Norway) are opposed - largely by middle class people wrongly thinking they are showing how clever and informed they are (better teaching of critical thinking in schools would help overcome that - as would addressing media misinformation [unlikely, given the power of the right wing “media”]).
The problems were most clearly apparent, in my opinion (IMO), with our attempt to introduce a Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) - which was lost, ultimately, at the behest of the mining industry and their puppets (the blue badged neoliberal party).
Now, from a whole-of-community economic point of view, not having a proper PRRT or similar means that, no matter how profitable the extraction is for the ultra-wealthy few, the community is probably getting next-to-no benefit - or possibly a massive dis-benefit when environmental and other damages are taken in to account.
That is not good enough.
As a first step, I consider that all claimed benefits from any extractive project MUST be actively monitored and measured against reality.
I recall reading a few months ago that the predicted tax moneys from a foreign-owned coal mine in Queensland had not yet been realised. Now, there were a number of possibly extenuating global market circumstances around that, but, if the decision to approve the mine had been based - to any degree - on those predicted cash flow benefits for the people of Australia (via their duly elected government), then that needs to be monitored, any actual (or lack of) cash flow measured against the predictions, and reported - PUBLICLY - to the Australian people and the government.
Ideally, I would like to see any failure to deliver financial benefits made up by the imposition of financial penalties, but that proposal will not get anywhere in neoliberal captured Australia.
The main area of predicted benefits that I would like to see monitored and measured is jobs.
Direct jobs are easy enough to do this for, but it is the indirect jobs that are more problematic. From sitting beside accountant/economic types in meetings during my working career, I know that there is a widely used 3:1 ratio - i.e., 3 indirect jobs (in grocery stores and other shops needed by workers or supporting businesses working directly for the project) for every directly employed person.
In many cases that is well justified, but that doesn’t, IMO, apply to FIFO (fly in, fly out) jobs of the types found in many of Australia's mines - and that is especially important to track if local jobs were a key factor in the project approval.
Of course, the issue that also needs to be addressed here is how to be compensated for any short fall in predicted benefits.
If the mine is struggling because the bottom has fallen out of the market it was aiming at, you can impose whatever penalties you want, and you won't get anything because the mine's bucket of money is already empty.
This is where the idea I wanted to write about may be able to metaphorically step in.
That idea is, to ease the loss of the mine when it closes down (which, of course, should include a proper environmental restoration), have the mine pay to develop an alternative industry/economic activity (NOT mining or mining-related or mining-dependent!!!) that will provide TO THE PEOPLE OF AUSTRALIA (i.e., not the 0.01% or whoever gets the profits) an annual value of economic activity equivalent to the average annual input to the Australian economy of the mine over its life.
This would exclude superprofits etc that only go to the share market, but should, if done properly, provide jobs to continue the economic activity without a sudden increase in unemployment or underemployment.
This would require investment to build the base resources (education, supply chains, power supplies, community building [including medical, etc] to support workers on a sustainable/ongoing basis, etc) and DIVERSE market development for whatever the economic activity is, but gradually building up so that it reaches its full target value at the end of the project.
If the mine falls over half way through, this economic activity will only be partially developed, but it will provide some compensation for local and broader communities, and will be a base that government could use to build on if desired.
And, under such circumstances, the reporting to the people of Australia could note, as an offset to any lost benefits, that there is a certain amount of community benefit through the partial development of alternative economic activity.
There would also potentially be some social goodwill benefits for the mining company out of that.
In fact, I personally consider (having worked on mines and towns near them in Queensland in the 1980s) that mines should plan on being good neighbours as much as possible - especially to First Peoples.
My experience there was that mines were nowhere near as popular as they think amongst landowners and townspeople - all of whom were aware that they would still be there after the mine had finished and flown the coop.
Based on some disturbing media reports in recent years, this may also require security personnel etc to be trained in de-escalation, managing their authoritarian tendencies, genuine respect for First Peoples and other minority groups, etc.
All of this, and some thinking in response to news reports I have read over several decades about corruption in a number of places, leads to some further thoughts about corruption - specifically, if I was starting from scratch in a place with limited resources, how would I proceed?
Well, first, seek the best advice locally and externally on what to do, but then use something like the monitoring suggested above - using two monitors internally and two externally, one focused on areal distribution of problems/benefits to make sure regional areas are not neglected, and one focused on people, to make sure all population centres are adequately catered for.
I’ll leave it all at that for now.
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
If you appreciated this post, please share it. I am now on SubStack, Patreon,
and you can support me at PayPal (or PayPal Repeating Support Options) or Ko-Fi
Any and all support will be greatly appreciated, and will aid me in continuing this work
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).
#PsychicABetterWorld and may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical BPM because #KindnessIsThePoint
Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear
Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2025 NO AI
I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence
(AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or
other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to
reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise replicate any part of
this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s
may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.
Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative
Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
.jpg)
