Minerals Council of Australia joins chorus of criticism about Shire of Coolgardie’s huge mining rates hike

The Minerals Council of Australia has joined the chorus of criticism about the Shire of Coolgardie’s huge mining rates hike for 2025-26, saying a high-cost local government area is “not a welcoming jurisdiction”.

The latest attack on the shire comes as Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed a slump in exploration spending in WA.

The ABS this week said exploration spending across all commodities in the State dropped from $553.6 million in the three months to March 2024 to $530.6m during the same period this year.

The Minerals Council’s executive director of WA David Parker told the Kalgoorlie Miner during a visit to the city on Wednesday that exploration was crucial to an ongoing pipeline of mine development.

“If you don’t have that pipeline of projects coming through, and you don’t have that . . . exploration activity, it’s going to be very hard to sustain continued operation particularly when you’ve got such globally significant demand for a product like gold at the moment; you’ve got to have those new operations, those greenfield and potentially brownfield sources of supply coming into the production cycle,” he said.

“The expectation for most global markets is that this country is investing in the front-end exploration to keep our production pipeline going.”

Mr Parker said the Shire of Coolgardie’s mining rates hike was just another impediment to this.

“Why would you look here if you’ve got a high-cost jurisdiction, or a high-cost local government jurisdiction . . . I think you’re sending a wrong sentiment . . . you’re not a welcoming jurisdiction, and it’s financially disadvantageous to operate in this particular area if your cost structure is going to be that much higher,” he said.

The shire last week approved a near-doubling of the unimproved value mining rate-in-the-dollar of 0.455263 for the 2025-26 financial year, compared to 0.236670 in 2024-25.

The decision prompted the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies to ask Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley to intervene.

“We’ll be asking the minister of local government to reject that and send the council back to the starting gate,” chief executive Warren Pearce told the Kalgoorlie Miner.

The Eastern Goldfields Prospectors Association is also calling for ministerial intervention.

This week a Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries spokesperson said Ms Beazley was “actively involved” in reviewing Coolgardie’s “substantial increase”.

“Given the substantial increase proposed and the breadth of concerns being raised from impacted ratepayers, the minister will be actively involved in reviewing this submission and is working very closely with the DLGSC,” she said.

“The Shire of Coolgardie will be advised of an outcome once the minister and DLGSC have reviewed the request.”