Queensland 17 July 2013. I want a re-think over Royalties to the Regions eligibility, as new Queensland Government rules discriminate against rural and remote mining communities.

By opening up eligibility to the Royalties to the Regions funding to nearly every council in Queensland, the competition for a share in the $95 million on offer is diluted and goes against the grain of the original Royalties programme which was to return a share of the mining royalties back into the communities from which they were earned.

This was to try and help balance the impact of the pressures on the infrastructure of those centres and the increased demand on local services, including demands from fly-in, fly-out workers.

Certainly Mount Isa, Cloncurry, McKinlay and Carpentaria shires fit that bill.

But now the Queensland Government, in another kick in the guts for rural and remote communities, has opened up the process to ‘mining support’ shires like Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Toowoomba.

This is an absolute joke, and every Queenslander in a mining community, where rental and home sale prices have skyrocketed and businesses and services have been impacted on, should be outraged.

So instead of just 14 direct-mining councils being eligible to apply, it’s virtually open slather with 64 councils across the state – ‘all supporting the resource sector’, according to the Government – and now all vying for a slice of $95 million.

The Queensland Government has again betrayed Queenslanders living outside the southeast corner or in a major regional centre by changing the rules after the game has started.

The election promise was to partially compensate for the additional living pressures in those communities.

Now the Queensland Government is turning its back on the people in these communities and, once again, handing out favours to their friends in regional centres which have little to do with extracting those rich resources out of the ground.

This decision opens the way for the Government to use the Royalties to the Regions funds to subsidise local government projects in major regional centres at the expense of those more pressing infrastructure needs in mining communities.

The West Australian Government has the Royalties to the Regions process down pat, and its investments in rural and remote areas in the Pilbara have yielded big social and economic dividends.

I urge this Government to revert to its original criteria, and consult more closely with councils in those true mining regions.