Government-owned-corporations are failing the mining industry, according to Member for Traeger Robbie Katter.
GOCs, originally set up to act as industry enablers, were turned into money-making enterprises under national competition policy, Mr Katter said.
Speaking at the recent Mount Isa MPX conference, Mr Katter took aim at Powerlink, Sunwater and Queensland Rail.
Main image: Harmony Eva Copper is yet to get a water allocation from Sunwater for access to Lake Julius near Mount Isa.
“They do a ‘one size fits all’ policy for mining industry saying it all came through from National Competition Policy where they say we need to corporatise all these assets,” he said.
“It might make sense for some of those utilities in the south-east corner where you’ve got a critical mass in the market (for competition). It will never make sense in the regions.
“The evidence is there now with Sunwater, your energy assets, your rail assets, they’re all trying to pretend to be this profit-making arm of the government where they were never intended for that.
“They’re not very good profit generators. For the five or $10 million of profit you make you’re denying us hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties and revenue.”
Government-owned corporations needed to be viewed in a different light, Mr Katter said.
“I just don’t think we’ve had the horsepower in the bureaucracy or in the governments to see it and want to change it enough … at what point are we going to have a look at all these government-owned corporations and see what the charter they’re operating under is?
“It’s nonsense and you’re going to have to continue using these clumsy cash subsidies instead of fixing the real problem. And that’s really disappointing here. They’re not willing to fix a real problem.”
Treasury needed to take the lead, Mr Katter said.
“The perennial problem with government is they’re not grounded enough and it’s not decentralised enough to have people on the ground out here to observe what the critical failures are on these policies.
“It was quite public that Harmony failed to do a deal with Sunwater on getting water out of Lake Julius for the Eva project. What could be a more farcical situation to highlight how ineffective these management structures are?
“It was a dam built for expansion of mining and despite multiple meetings with the minister from myself and multiple advocacy meetings and with Sunwater themselves, that’s still unresolved.”
Treasury was represented as audience members at MPX.