The US is closing down its coal mines and China won’t allow anymore to be dug. Clearly, they see coal as more of a curse than a boon. Is ours the same? We went to the Hunter Valley for a few days to look into this.
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First question: is the coal industry good for the Hunter? It employs 12,000 miners and they are well paid. This should boost the local economy. But only 15 per cent of these jobs go to locals.
The remaining 85 per cent of coal mining jobs go to “outsiders”. The reason? Coal mining jobs have shrunk by 30 per cent Australia-wide and miners find work wherever they can.
Most of what these visiting miners earn leaves the Hunter.
With the 30 per cent drop in coal mining jobs, there has also been a 30 per cent decline in wages.
This decline in jobs and wages is expected to worsen as we export less and less coal.
Those who have vineyards, horse studs and farms hate the coal companies.
They fear their properties will be taken from under them!
They hate what the miners do to the country, ripping it up and and leaving it like a moonscape when they depart.
The miners tell them they rehabilitate abandoned mines.
The truth is that in the Hunter Valley they rehabilitate only half of them! In Queensland it is worse. Coal companies there have left the taxpayers with a $3.2 billion bill to rehabilitate their mines.
Second question: what does coal mining contribute to the national economy? Surprisingly little! Some 85 per cent of the profit from coal mining goes overseas. And despite the fact coal makes up 10 per cent of our exports the coal industry pays little tax, only 0.63 per cent of the Commonwealth’s total revenue.
On top of that, we taxpayers give coal miners $1.8 billion/year in subsidies. It’s a classic case of an industry/company sending most of its profits overseas, being heavily subsidised and paying very little tax!
All of the above says that coal mining is more of a curse than a boon.
Is its importance lessening, to the extent that we can soon end coal mining? Yes. Coal has shed 20,000 jobs while the broader economy has added more than 1.1 million.
While the value of coal exports dropped, GDP has grown by a third.
Our total exports grew, while coal exports dropped from 22 per cent of exports to 10 per cent.
