PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Queensland Resources Council (QRC) has expressed its relief that Queensland Labour’s proposed plans to ban resource projects only making use of a fly-in, fly-out (Fifo) workforce, would not extend to the projects already under way.

Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk in January launched the party’s jobs plan, which included plans to legislate against projects only making use of a Fifo workforce. Palaszczuk said, at the time, that the move would create more jobs for Queenslanders in regional communities.

However, in an interview with a regional radio station, the party’s senior spokesperson Jackie Trad confirmed that the ban would not be retrospective.

“You can’t go in and retrospectively change a workforce - that would create a lot of chaos; but it would be for new mines and the policy is to absolutely stop the 100% Fifo because there’s a lot of regional communities where locals are missing out on jobs because of that policy,” she said.

The QRC said this week that the news came as a huge relief to more than 900 coal industry workers in central Queensland’s Bowen basin.

CEO Michael Roche said Labor’s October pledge to retrospectively review existing employment arrangements at two Bowen basin mines had sent a shudder through the resources sector.

“Changing the rules under which companies have committed billions of investment dollars would be a very bad move by any government serious about attracting new investment and jobs,” Roche said.

He added that the Labour party’s clarification of its policy has lifted a weight off the shoulders of hundreds of employees from Cairns and south-east Queensland who successfully competed with many thousands of other applicants for jobs at the two mines under a Fifo model approved by the former Anna Bligh government.

Queenslanders recently took part in the state elections, the outcome of which was still hanging as parties vied to gain support from independents in order to form a minority government.