30 May 2014

Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor said it was a ‘massive disappointment’ to be losing 40 mining jobs at Tahmoor.

Mr Taylor was responding to Glencore’s announcement yesterday that it would make redundant one of the development crews at its Tahmoor Underground Mine from July this year.

“Having worked in the resources sector for 20 years of my life, this is incredibly disappointing to be losing resources jobs in my electorate,” Mr Taylor said. “This will be a tough time for local families and I offer my assistance and that of the Federal Government to try and secure new employment opportunities for affected staff.

“Glencore’s decision and its ongoing review of mining operations reflects a major structural problem in the sector. To boil it down, our costs - labour, energy and transport costs - are continuing to go up and our competitors are selling coal cheaper. We’re operating within highly competitive markets for thermal coal, coking coal, copper and nickel, but our costs are well above global averages.

“Only five years ago we could build coal and iron ore projects as cheaply as our competitors. Now, Australian iron ore projects are 30% more expensive than the global average - and for thermal coal, the figure is 66%.

“It hasn’t helped that we’ve had an unnecessarily high exchange rate due to a failure to run budget surpluses.”

Mr Taylor said the Glencore announcement was not unexpected. “We’ve been stuck discussing the merits of a mining tax when we should have been making ourselves more competitive. We should have been finding the most competitively priced supply items like fuel, equipment and consumables and returning the budget to surplus to ease pressure on exchange rates.”