The Great Coal Mining Swindle

Are you sick of the constant claims by the coal industry that the NSW economy would collapse without them?

Let’s put those claims into perspective:

1. Very few people are employed in the coal industry – in fact, less than 0.2% of the working population of Australia are employed in all coal mining.
2. The coal industry (like all corporations, world wide) are experts at NOT paying tax. For example, Centennial Coal (which accounts for almost half the coal supplies to NSW power stations) paid total tax of $4.1 Million in 2010.  This was on sales of $800 million and a profit of $71 Million. – ref http://www.centennialcoal.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=468&Itemid=149
3. The coal industry also pay royalties, (3% of the NSW Government income comes from all royalties)  which are far more difficult to avoid,  but their bullying of the Federal government over the Mining Super Profits Tax means that these will soon be reduced or cancelled.
4. Their benefit to our exports is greatly exaggerated – they ‘forget’ to mention that virtually all of their equipment and operating costs, apart from wages, have to be imported, directly or indirectly, from overseas which offsets most of that export income.  Finally, do not forget that most of them are foreign owned (Centennial Coal was taken over by Banpu of Thailand in October last year), so their profits are then sent overseas further offsetting their export income

What is also never taken into account is the external costs that coal mining generates from its pollution and operations.  Increased health costs, costs of monitoring and repairing their environmental damage, rail and road costs (all paid for by taxpayers) for them to transport their coal, port infrastructure, etc.  Then there is the biggest ‘externality’ of all – the contribution to global warming that all those greenhouse gases produce.

Coal – the sooner we get rid of it, the better.