Property Point

You could hear the raucous laughter down the hallway as State Government ministers, lounging around the Parliament Cabinet Room, started joking about Mackay.

Politicians come up with new Mackay jokes every year around budget time and they just get funnier.

“Why did the Mackay chicken cross the road?”

“To drop off more money to the State Government!”  That cracked them up.

“What is it called when we get billions of dollars from Mackay region mining and then leave them to travel on goat tracks?”

“Highway robbery!” Another good one.

You might not see the funny side as you dodge the dangers on the single lane heading south from Mackay to Rockhampton. Nor while making your way north along hundreds of kilometres of single-lane, third-rate highway.

And you’re right; it’s not funny. But it is a joke.  I might have made up the joke-telling anecdote about the Queensland politicians, but it does reflect a joke that they and their federal counterparts have been playing on Mackay for years.

And, when you see how much money is produced for the state through royalties and for the nation through taxes, you wonder how it can be.

But what makes the joke pretty damn sick is the number of people, many young, who are killed on the roads north, south and west of Mackay.

This came to mind the other day when the CEO of North Queensland Bulk Ports, Brendan Webb, presented the organisation’s economic impact study to a Resource Industry Network (RIN) breakfast at Harrup Park.

NQBP’s ports, which include Abbot Point, Port of Mackay and Hay Point, facilitate 54 per cent of Queensland’s international trade by volume. The company and its tenants and trade partners, obviously including mining companies, create $35 billion a year for Queensland’s Gross State Product and 47,000 jobs.

It is not hard to note the billions of dollars our region contributes to the state and the nation and wonder why our highway makes a llama track in the Andes look safe and secure.

Apart from the massive amounts of employment and subsequent taxes that are produced, this region contributes billions in mining royalties. In the 2022-2023 financial year, coal royalties were $15 billion.

Mining creates other jobs, both in the sector servicing the mines and in other areas; miners need hairdressers and plumbers, and their kids need clothes and schools. And we have people here also pushing to diversify our economy.

The activity has created a demand for housing, both from long-term residents and recently arrived locals, as well as investors who see Mackay as a great opportunity.

People who bought property some years ago have now got greater financial security, and those who are buying now are still picking up property much cheaper than in southern markets.

Those figures that Brendan Webb produced add to the feeling of security, knowing that this is a powerful economic region in which it is worth buying a property and putting down roots.

In these strange days, dominated by the fanatical followers of the fundamentalist religion of Climate Change and its divine entity, Net Zero, there is one set of NQBP figures that should instil confidence in Mackay homeowners.

By value, 86 per cent of NQBP’s annual exports are of metallurgical coal (the stuff that makes steel) and 11 per cent is thermal coal (used for power plants).

It is true that large countries in our region, such as China, India, and Indonesia, are not slowing down on thermal coal, but there is global pressure to use alternatives.

But you can’t produce the steel for bridges, buildings and cars without metallurgical coal … and ours is the best.

Global demand for steel, particularly through Asian urbanisation, is good news for metallurgical coal demand, local jobs and Mackay homeowners.

The bad news is still the roads into and out of Mackay.

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