JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Legislation stemming from the Queensland Parliament is a greater concern to resource company CEOs than global macroeconomic conditions, the Queensland Resources Council’s (QRC’s) quarterly ‘State of the Sector’ survey has found.

The survey reveals, that for the second quarter in a row, concerns about poor and uncertain regulation are again outweighing concerns about the state of the commodity market.

QRC CEO Michael Roche said in a statement on Monday that the constant changes to industry regulation seemed to be “really starting to bite” into industry confidence.

“This recent focus on regulatory concerns is disturbing given that in the 19 editions of the QRC CEO Sentiment Survey, the global macroeconomy has ranked the number one concern in 15 of the 19 quarters."

CEO comments in the survey raised government instability, green/activist votes, uncertainty around financial assurance and mine closure regulations as some of the pressing issues.

Roche added that CEOs also nominated the areas in which they wanted to see urgent reform.

Environmental regulation, such as fixing the uncertainty over the government's chain of responsibility legislation, topped CEO concerns, but reform of the land court and local government rate setting were also prominent.

“The message from the sector is that genuine consultation must take place with stakeholders affected by changes to legislation, as opposed to the new laws being rammed through,” Roche highlighted, adding that the “mere” two weeks allocated for consultation on the government's legislation arising from the fly-in, fly-out Parliamentary inquiry was another example of inadequate consultation.

“However the latest State of the Sector report has some positive news. Coal exports are at record highs, with 222-million tonnes shipped offshore over the past financial year.

“Productivity in Queensland resources is also high with the coal industry producing around 2 800 t per employee, up by 170% in the past four years,” Roche pointed out.

Further, he noted that if there was community complacency about the importance of the sector, the QRC was determined to address that by reminding people that the sector provided one in every five dollars of the Queensland economy and one in six jobs.

“The recent federal election results show that those politicians who do support our sector and the jobs of those people in their electorates are in turn supported by the voters,” he said.