David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator, as a person who has come from the mining industry, can I tell you that the cashflow documents that justify the borrowings that fund the development of the mine are based upon prices that fluctuate very rapidly in a very volatile market, over a short space of time. So fly-in-fly-out gives the owner of the mineral deposit the right to access and extract those minerals in as short a time as possible—to seize the price of the day, which on a particular day is determined as profitable. If you want to build towns and get all the approvals and do all the things you need to do, the bird may well have flown. We are a mining country. We must mine the minerals and provide minerals to the world—be it coal, be it oil and gas, be it minerals. We must do it expeditiously. We must seize the price of the moment because those prices will not stick around for very long.