A new report details the subsidies and financial assistance given to mining and fossil fuel industries:
…it might surprise taxpayers to learn that state government assistance for the mineral and fossil fuel industries consumes significant amounts of their money.
Each state provides millions of dollars’ worth of assistance to mining industries every year, with the big mining states of Queensland and Western Australia routinely spending over one billion dollars in assistance.
This paper is the first attempt to put a dollar figure on the value of state assistance to the mining industry. It shows that over a six-year period, state governments in Australia spent $17.6 billion supporting the mineral and fossil fuel industries. Queensland’s assistance was by far the largest of all states, totalling $9.5 billion, followed by Western Australia’s at $6.2 billion.