INDUSTRY VOICES

“All of our projects are high margin projects so the addition of the royalty is not going to change the business and how the business is run; that’s a reality.

But this is an impost on the gold mining industry.

It’s a breach of promises that the Labor party made during the campaign period.”

independence Group chief executive and managing director Peter bradford

“The WA gold industry is quite segmented and the scale of operators is really broad, from junior explorers to global major producers.

[Increased costs] always goes through to discovery costs and exploration; the discovery of new deposits is becoming increasingly more challenging and any increase in the royalty will materially impact people’s decision to invest.”

northern star chief executive stuart tonkin

“It makes no economic sense that the WA Government would want to damage one of the engine rooms of our economy by hitting it with a 50 per cent increase in a major cost, when that only represents 0.2 per cent of the 2017/18 Revenue Budget.”

How is that Budget repair when 60 per cent of the revenue raised will go to Canberra and be re-distributed through the GST process?

The opposition parties have all stood up for Western Australia as one of the world’s leading mining jurisdictions, and to stop job losses and prevent lost opportunities.”

AMEC Acting chief executive Graham short

“For our business that [would have been] a $6 million hole into our free cash flow.

To think [the gold royalty] is not going to have an impact on WA jobs is unrealistic, and I suppose the biggest disappointment out of all this is that this is the third time this has been floated up.

The previous two times it has been in consultation, and we’ve been able to engage with Government. This one has had no engagement whatsoever.”

Saracen Managing director raleigh Finlayson