Prospect of teals or Greens having say in power should ‘send shivers down WA’s spine,’ says mining boss

The boss of Australia’s peak mining body has sounded the alarm over a “Hunger Games” scenario where WA projects are pitted against each other if Labor relies on the Greens and teals to form minority government. Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable argued the prospect of that election outcome should be “sending shivers down every person in Western Australia’s spine” and said it was an outcome the mining industry would “fear most”. Asked whether the industry wanted a change of Government come May’s election, Ms Constable said it was “not about us deciding who the politicians are or not.” “It is about making sure that they give every industry a fair go, and they don’t in mining. It is the industry that they work against most, that is something I observe on a daily basis,” Ms Constable said in Perth on Thursday. Ms Constable claimed that industry would see “trade-offs start to occur from all over” if Labor needed to negotiate with any potential successful teal or Greens candidates. She referenced the mothballed McPhillamys gold project in New South Wales and WA’s North West Shelf project as examples. A Federal decision to extend the contested Woodside Energy-owned gas plant operations for another 50 years has been delayed by the Federal Government twice in the lead-up to election. “And there will be an expectation there’ll be trade-offs, it will be something like The Hunger Games, this project versus that project,” Ms Constable said. Her comments at a WA Mining Club event on Thursday also come amid a growing Pilbara union movement taking place across Rio Tinto and BHP mine sites. BHP iron ore boss Tim Day on Thursday lauded the Cook Government but said the Federal Government’s industrial relations approach was putting WA’s mining industry at risk. He said they were making it “more difficult and more expensive” to compete internationally, while suggesting the local industry could be overtaken by the likes of Argentina, Canada and Chile. Mr Day said the State Government had done an “excellent job for many years” and was “quite conducive to business”, but he did not extend those compliments to Federal counterparts. “There’s an entire ecosystem of investment flows all the way through back to those policy settings. On industrial relations . . . if you have too many of those things getting more complicated for you, it just makes it more difficult and more expensive to play in an international sort of situation,” Mr Day said.