Gina Rinehart- Govt to blame for high mining costs

I like and admire Gina Rinehart. She has the same strong will and guts and staying power as her prospector father Lang Hancock. She is building on her father’s iron ore legacy by developing the $10 billion Roy Hill mine in Pilbara. Lang always wanted his own mine but generally had to settle for royalty agreements. Gina could have sat back and enjoyed the income from these agreements for the rest of her life rather than invest $10 billion in Roy Hill.

Iron ore prices are falling and the future of the Roy Hill mine is by no means secure. The mine is 76 per cent complete but iron ore price halved to $US58.32 per tonne overnight Tuesday, the lowest level since daily prices were introduced in May 2009. Analysts estimate Roy Hill will break even at prices between $US50 per tonne and $US55 per tonne. Critics have said a boost in ore production as will occur when Roy Hill comes on line is not going to help prices.

Mrs Rinehart though said it was high costs associated with govt compliance, rather than low iron ore prices that affected her Roy Hill project.

Gina Rinehart at a Pilbara drilling site 20 years ago

“What affects the project is high costs,” Mrs Rinehart said. “As I have said so many times it is really important government cost burdens are lowered. We have regulations; be it approval processes, be it permits, be it licences, be it the checks that have to go on after those compliances.” She said governments needed to take regulatory costs seriously.

“They have to cut these government cost burdens because our costs are incredible,” Mrs Rinehart said. Roy Hill Holdings chief executive Barry Fitzgerald told the conference the mining company was subject to significant regulatory burdens. More than 4000 approvals have been required and environmental compliance was increasing.

Yes, compliance is increasing, and even though we hear time after time after time from politicians that they will make cutting red tape a priority, IT NEVER HAPPENS.

We have supposed right wing coalitions in power in both Australia and NZ but it still NEVER HAPPENS.

Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine is an example of real enterprise, a project that brings real wealth to a country, but it and many like it are being choked off by regulation crazy tax and spend socialist govts who don’t get the simple point that they need production.

That the retail industry is going well because of socialist redistribution and pump priming, all based on debt, is no measure of a sound economy. At the same time as it indulges in this kind of feeble smoke and mirrors deceit, the govt has its boot on the throat of real producers like the Roy Hill mine.

We desperately need regulations cut back, but we’ve needed this for decades and yet that burden continues to grow. It is clear status quo governments and politicians will not do what is necessary. Something new is needed.