Joyce McCulloch

Mayor with mining on her mindShe grew up on remote cattle properties and cut her teeth in retail and event management before turning her sights on local government. It is not the obvious grounding for someone taking the lead as an advocate for mining communities nationwide. But when that someone is Joyce McCulloch, mayor of one of Australia’s great mining cities, the picture fits.Cr McCulloch founded the Australia Mining Cities Alliance late last year along with the mayors of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Broken Hill. The move was announced at the annual Sustainable Economic Growth for Regional Australia – SEGRA – conference in Port Augusta. “We are communities that were born from mining,” Cr McCulloch said. “We had our first meeting last year and felt if we came together as one we could probably lobby a lot more effectively to governments and to industry and perhaps manipulate – and I say that positively - towards policies and initiatives for mining.” Cr McCulloch has also been appointed to the Federal Government’s Resources 2030 Taskforce alongside such figures as BHP’s Mike Henry and Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) president Will Robinson. The group has been asked to investigate reforms to secure the competitiveness of Australia’s resources sector and help ensure its longevity. Cr McCulloch agrees these roles have placed her in a strong position as an advocate in the resources sector – and she has a very clear sense of direction. “I can be very, very bold in my recommendations, but it is a question of whether the governments have the appetite to move forward with it and how much control they have,” she said. To further bolster economic development and jobs creation in northern Australia, Cr McCulloch has formed the Tennant Creek to Mount Isa Cross Border Commission. “We’re already seeing significant and substantial developments along the corridor between Mount Isa and Tennant Creek, including the advent of the Northern Gas Pipeline and further work on the proposed Mount Isa to Tennant Creek Rail Link,” Cr McCulloch said. “By strengthening communication and coordination between our respective councils and actively involving other levels of government, I am confident the region’s economy will grow and diversify more quickly.” Cr McCulloch came to north-west Queensland in the 1980s, when her family moved to Cloncurry from the Northern Territory. Her father was a cattleman, who managed cattle properties and did quite a lot of droving, she said. “I lived on remote cattle properties as a child and did school of the air,” Cr McCulloch said. “For the first probably 10 years of my life the only friends I had were my brother and sister and the indigenous kids on the stations.” She worked in retail before taking the helm at Mount Isa Rotary Rodeo in 1994, working as general manager there until 2009. The mother of two was elected to Mount Isa City Council in 2012 and won the position of Mayor in the 2016 local government elections. She says her priorities in local government have included positive organisational change and community. “I just like to put a lot more emphasis back on to community and making it more of a liveable city and also ensuring that Mount Isa positions itself as the business hub of our region,” she said. “I’m pretty strong on governance. I like really good governance around anything that we move forward and do.” Cr McCulloch believes mining communities tend to be ‘the forgotten cousins’ despite their great contribution to the Australian economy She said she was keen to have a role in driving policies that paid greater regard to those communities that bore the brunt of the ups and downs of the mining cycle. The economic downturn and population drain that cities like Mount Isa suffered when commodities foundered did not make for sustainable communities, she said. For local government, it means trying to maintain a high level of service against the backdrop of a falling rates base - on top of the fact there is a relatively high proportion of non-resident workers in the area who require service but do not contribute to that rates base. “The Australian Mining Cities Alliance is for communities that are on the ground, that are affected by the industry, so I think that we need a lot greater opportunity to influence how our economies move forward,” she said. “I just don’t think our communities have had a loud enough voice in the past and I think we need a loud voice moving forward.” Cr McCulloch said also that Resources 2030 Taskforce members had been asked to ‘think bold’ and she had some very clear ideas about how the mining industry in Australia could remain sustainable the global stage. “Australia is a great resource spot - but how do we compare to other markets around the world in operating mining?’ she said. “Just from my observations I think that Australia is a very expensive place to do business. I think that we are outpricing ourselves with a lot of the inputs the industry has to absorb like the high cost of energy and the high cost of workers.”

Joyce McCulloch

Industry Queensland

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