Gold’s remarkable year
Gold truly enjoyed a remarkable 2024, relentlessly powering higher to many new records.
The Australian reports almost 14,000 people looking for work queued for 50 minutes just to get into the Australian Mines and Metals Association’s jobs expo in Perth over the weekend only to find the developers of the first project in the country to be granted “unprecedented access to foreign workers was not there to greet them.”
Australia’s government announced Friday it will allow the $9.3 billion Roy Hill iron ore mining project to hire about 1,700 foreign workers, as MINING.com reported. They will be hired under the first Enterprise Migration Agreement (EMA) to alleviate a labour shortage said the threatening the country’s resource-led boom.
Roy Hill is part-owned by the country’s richest person and number four on the list of the world of mining’s billionaires Gina Rinehart and her company Hancock Prospecting was absent from the fair and so were the project’s main contractors including WorleyParsons, Clough, John Holland and Multiplex says AMMA.
MINING.com published in January an article about the reasons why mining professionals should take the mining jobs boom in Down Under with pinch of salt.
Click here before you jump on the next plane headed for the Antipodes.
8 Comments
Alby Lineman
The ignorance and emotion in this report and some of the comments below is becoming so typical nowadays. If you had bothered to actually check your facts you would have established some misguided information certain interest groups want you to believe. Royhill are hiring very few if any personnel, most will be done by major contractors, the ones you have listed maybe? Have those contracts actually have been awarded by Royhill yet? Are those contractors locked in, signed up and start dates confirmed? Maybe they cant recruit even if they wanted to? Do your homework before printing this rubbish. With the project not to start proper for at least 6 months and another year after basic infrastructure is in place before needing anywhere near the numbers being talked about. Part of the tendering process is to do due dilligance on the availability of personnel during the construction time frame – we all know how busy the next 2 years are going to be, so getting agreement to bring in foreign workers now to satisfy any shortfalls that might prevent its completion, to satisfy the investors who are sinking their billions into it is simply smart business. Unlike maybe the Rio’s and BHP, it aint all Gina’s money (which is made up of share values etc. – not a pile of cash sitting in the bank) and if you think we all own it – newsflash – it aint worth a cent if you dont risk the bucks to dig it up – getting something instead of nothing is to me always a better deal. Its OK for australian mining companies to go overseas like we have been doing for years and making profit and personnel like myself learning skills to bring back here off other countries though – isn’t it! If they are not needed they wont come as you are niave if you think it is cheaper to bring in foreign workers, we simply dont have enough of the particular skills the project needs, you have to have more experienced personnel (it takes many years – not a few weeks as you would like to get experience) than trainees to actually teach and still get the job done safely, simple fact. 2000 trainees out of 9500 is a better ratio than any other company running around at the moment. Keep Gina bashing folks – the old tall poppie syndrome at it again – I know you didn’t make billions sitting on your butt and quite rightly you really need to give it away to those do, well done media, Go Gina!
Advice – setup manufacturing of big trucks, stackers, conveyors, mining support equipment etc etc. that are all imported and subsidise these instead of sinking millions into the car industry.
Lambsy40
If Gina Rinehart is so desperate for workers from over seas to fill the so called skills labour gap, why doesn’t she spend a lil of her fortune on us Aussies looking to get a foot in the mining industry door. It’s not that hard to train people that want to work. The Government should give the mining companies an incentive to hire non skilled workers & make all the big mining companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP, Hancock Prospecting etc spend time & money training NON SKILLED AUSSIES for the mining Industry before they look else where, then maybe there would not be such a thing as skilled shortages in Australia.
Andrea
I live in Tasmania, I spend at least 2 hours EVERY day applying for positions right across Australia, I have spent nearly $10000.00 making sure I have all the right licences and certificates for the mining industry, am happy to move anywere, But I dont have any “MINE” experience so keep getting passed over and now your going to hire peple from outside Australia. Please tell me Julia and Gina how am I supposed to get work!
Rednutz69
The wealth beneath this country belongs to all Australians and not Gina Rinehart. ‘Off with her head!’ Just shows that governments in democratic nations are not the top dogs, big business and the big money are. Our vote is an allusion that the people are in control of this country.
Shazz_62
The Australian Goverment should kick Rienhart out of Australia if she cant employ west australians ,and all unions should band together and hold the royhill project up big time,and just think we as Australian citizens vote for this petheteic goverment,its amazeing what money can do.but when they are loseing lots they will change there mind quick smart.
John of Wollongong
Maybe Gina Reinhart is prepared to pay Australian Wages and Conditions but is trying to avoid the Union problems which have beset the Bowen Basin. A boom is only a boom when you meet production targets and obligations.
Bondileo
Mate, I have been in the construction side on the mining game for a Lil while now, I was at Xmas Creek(FMG Site) Karara a Chinese owned mining site and I was at Sino MCC a Chinese owned site; all in W.A. Now I’m at Port Hedland on a BHP site and through all those sites where I have been I have never seen one apprentice on any of those sites. Why don’t they the big mining companies makes the FIFO conditions better?
Seems to me that what they want is to drive down wages, least face it Australian workers has very good wages here In the mines compared to other countries saying.
And if it wasent for the unios they would have as workers doing 73 hours weeks for &1500 clear after tax… That’s not fair.
TRB
I am in the mines working and trying to move into another area of work. All I get is no experience relies. I have spent money on certificates and making sure I know how it all works but still get passed over. I have guys back home who have spent heaps more than me to get in and still no able to do so. Why not take them in- being keen should amount to something. Green is not always a bad thing. Just because the Americans may have some experience doesn’t make them better than a green worker. I have nothing against Americans, I am from above the USA border but give us Australian keen workers equal opportunities. The Americans will still need to be trained so why not train the australians. I think Ms Gillard is now going to bed with Ms Rhinehart for political reasons????