Published on : Modified :
Coal, natural gas, gold, oil, copper… Australia’s subsoil alone provides more than half of the country’s export revenues. An advantageous situation at a time when the price of minerals is exploding on the international markets, but from which Australia does not fully benefit, due to a shortage of labor which affects the entire mining sector.
From our correspondent in Sydney,
The price of Australian coal has never been so high, it is currently trading at nearly double the price of just a year ago. And yet, sales are plummeting. Loadings from Newcastle, the largest coal port in the world located north of Sydney, are down 12% over the first nine months of the year.
Exports from BHP, the world’s largest mining company, are also down. Its sales of metallurgical coal, used to make steel, are down 25%. And those of thermal coal, by 38%.
This is not the result of a drop in demand. Akio Mimura, the president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, has thus just recalled that it is vital for Japan to secure its supplies of Australian gas and coal. But rather the combined effect of the very heavy rains this year which disrupted or even interrupted mining activity on the east coast and above all of a labor shortage which affects the entire mining industry.
24,000 jobs to be filled within 5 years
A shortage resulting from a “zero Covid” policy which resulted in the closure of Australia’s borders for two years. But also of a disaffection of young people who, in the era of climate change, do not want to work for an industry perceived as the main emitter of greenhouse gases in Australia.
However, the mining industry argues that beyond the extraction of fossil fuels, it needs hands to develop the production of metals necessary to ensure the energy transition, such as lithium or copper. Thus, it plans to recruit 24,000 people in the next five years and to achieve this, it has pleaded with the government to facilitate the entry of qualified immigrants…
A message heard in Canberra, the Prime Minister having announced that he was going to raise the immigration quotas by more than 20% next year.