Mc Camp…..get it?
There’s a proposal to build a 1500 person temporary accommodation facility in Singleton, Hunter Valley, which is causing a bit of fuss. The company proposing the project is The MAC, who have built similar camps in other mining towns, such as Narrabri (pictured).
The fuss is because the camps are to house fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) or drive-in-drive-out (DIDO) workers to mine sites. The camps are usually a bit out of town with their own shops, bar, etc, meaning the well-paid miners are kept away from local businesses and communities who therefore gain little from having mining projects near them.
MAC village at Narrabri, taken Dec 2012
You wouldn’t really know that from the economic assessment prepared by the Western Research Institute, a consultancy in Bathurst. Rather than doing a proper cost benefit analysis, they’ve used input output modelling to give, we believe, a misleading impression of economic benefit from the project.
Special thanks to new Economist at Large, Marc Fegredo, who did most of the work on the submission.
Here’s our submission
Ecolarge 2013 Singleton MAC DA submission FINAL
Here’s HRI’s original assessment
