Kalgoorlie Last month, Diggers and Dealers brought 2300 people to Kalgoorlie-Boulder for its annual three day forum with a line-up of the industry’s leading gold, base metal and agribusiness companies operating around the globe. The message from the presentations is that the industry is in good shape with many holding substantial cash and major new resources being discovered at depth in mines previously worked and abandoned by their predecessors. Drilling companies are once again busy and companies generally are finding it hard to recruit staff. With all this activity in our region we should be run off our feet but that is not the case for many sectors of our economy. The scourge is FIFO and such is the extent of the conditioning of the workforce that workers expects to the flown in and out of their coastal homes as if it was their right.
FIFO kills rural communities, and Kalgoorlie-Boulder, in spite of its size, is not immune. The City has not grown appreciably for the last decade although the mining and drilling industries have been in growth mode. The major reason is plain and that is the impact of the Fringe Benefits Tax. It was introduced to put an end to the excesses of the business lunch but as is so often the case with targeted taxes the impact has been much more far reaching than intended, to the point it actively favours FIFO over residential housing in rural communities. If the FBT was modified so it encourages domiciling mine workforces that are within DIDO of centres like Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Kambalda, Leonora, Laverton, Norseman, Newman, Port Hedland, etc, and dropped the tax deductibility of permanent workers being flown in and out of mine sites that have a community centre nearby, it would immediately inject money into local shops and businesses instead of being all found in camp messes with little or no spin off to local communities. There would be an immediate pick up in the building industry, retail shops would return to viability and new ones open, restaurants would flourish and sporting clubs would again be able to field competitive teams. Our challenge is to get bipartisan support for a change to the most damaging aspects of the FBT and put rural life back onto a growth footing. The mining industry is doing its bit, it’s time the politicians did likewise.
