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INTERNATIONAL COAL NEWS

Bowen to feel carbon pain

BOWEN Basin communities are forecast to shoulder most of the economic pain in Queensland arising ...

Angie Tomlinson

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Put together by state premiers and chief ministers through the Council for the Australian Federation, the report shows a significant slowdown in future economic activity in the Mackay and Fitzroy statistical divisions.

The Access Economics modelling said by 2025, anticipated employment growth in Mackay would be retarded by 3.3% and economic output by 4.7%.

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said the report also projected an annual loss to Queensland taxpayers of more than $1.6 billion in revenues – principally from resource sector royalties – by 2020-21.

“As one of the nation’s most productive mining and minerals processing regions is dragged down, so does the income stream for the state government’s funding of essential services, such as education and health,” he said.

“This report is also significant for putting to rest the myth that the inevitable slowdown in central Queensland can be offset by new, green jobs.

“These jobs are gone from central Queensland, not substituted, and leave local workers as prime candidates for long-term unemployment. Across Queensland, the cost of putting a price on carbon translates into 28,000 fewer jobs by 2020.”

Roche said unless there was international agreement to follow the government’s commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, most of the jobs forgone in the Bowen Basin were likely to end up with Australia’s export coal competitors.

“It flies in the face of previous global agreements to expect that coal-exporting competitors, such as Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa, will follow Australia’s early lead in cutting domestic emissions.”

Roche said Access Economics’ conclusions aligned closely with last month’s Concept Economics modelling, which showed 11,440 direct minerals industry job displacements by 2020 in Queensland, with another 8700 jobs lost indirectly in central Queensland.

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