FIFO 3

How did we get here?

As I remarked last week, for an overall view you could do worse than read the history section of the Federal Government inquiry report. But I’ll just give you observations from my experience.

There had always been some form of remote working and fly-in camps, but it had mainly been for construction projects. New mines tended to be serviced from existing towns (like Clermont, Cobar, or Carnarvon) or if there were not any towns nearby (mineral deposits being inconsiderate), new towns emerged (Kalgoorlie, Broken Hill, Mt Isa etc) or were built (like Tom Price, Telfer, Newman & Paraburdoo).

Most of these towns had a “single persons quarters” (SPQ – or SMQ & SWQ, to keep things civilised) component – accommodation blocks, normally fairly basic (room, bed, table, communal ablutions), where “itinerant” (i.e. not local) workers could live, with messing and laundry facilities. This was just because the towns couldn’t provide enough workers, or there weren’t enough families willing to move to these isolated areas.

Life in the bush can be tough, and in the mining towns no different but sometimes mitigated by the population and money the mine brought into the region. It could be particularly tough in those purpose-built towns – they truly were very remote. My crew in Clermont would bemoan their isolation, being an hour from Emerald and three hours from Mackay or Rockhampton, all major regional towns. I’d tell them in Paraburdoo, you were three hours from Nanutarra Roadhouse…

But the SPQ residents weren’t FIFO – they lived there permanently. They were just part of the “landscape” of the town. And they weren’t just mine workers – the banks, schools, hospital and police would have single people living in them, too. Often, the SWQ would be known as “the Nurse’s Quarters” and be located next to the hospital. It may be I’ve spent a bit of time in and around the Nurse’s Quarters…

This balance started to shift in the early 90’s, with the recession and general downturns in the business but mainly because of Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT). The downturn led to vacant houses in town and more single people moving from SPQ to house-share arrangements, sometimes to the extent that the SPQ’s shut down.

But FBT was the killer. The companies had built and maintained the towns including all the amenities (which were generally equivalent to what you’d find in an average capital city suburb), houses were fully serviced and provided at peppercorn rents. This was considered by the State governments to be paternalistic, so the companies were forced to “normalise” the towns – which meant creating a “council/shire”, ceding all of the public assets to them, then paying a “special rate” to subsidise them. This cost a lot more than just running the towns. Then the Federal Government decided that this (housing, services, extra facilities, the lot) was all a Fringe Benefit, so was also taxable. That was the end for new towns built by companies – it had never been easy to build and manage a town, and now it was just too expensive.

Worldwide, FIFO had always been reality for the oil and gas industry – offshore platforms and wildcat drillers don’t give you much option for anything else. And it had also been something done by ex-pat communities in the Third World – I worked with a bloke who did FIFO from the US to a coal mine in Turkey for 5 years (12 weeks on, 6 weeks off) in the 80’s. Informal FIFO (and DIDO in Queensland & NSW) had been going on for quite a while, too – people relocating their families to a city, maintaining some accommodation in the work town and paying for the airfares themselves. The “locals” and the likes of Tony Windsor hated this, but couldn’t find a way to stop it (although they tried). And very remote mines like Woodie-Woodie and Tanami were already FIFO.

Brockman was the first “test” of FIFO in Pilbara iron ore. It started as 6 weeks on (13-day fortnights, and then a day off in camp – happy days), 1 week off. That was a construction roster, and it was a killer – no-one liked it, and it didn’t last. But the concept worked. There were many different rosters, but 2 weeks on, 1 week off settled as the “baseline” eventually – which has now largely transitioned to “even time” (2/2 or 1/1).

And soon, with the boom starting, Yandi (BHP, then Rio), West Angelas and many others commenced. It spread to the existing towns – first the SPQ’s were reopened, then new camps were built inside and outside the towns as the existing mines expanded and extended, and new operations were opened nearby to make use of existing processing plants. With the advent of 10, 20, 30, 50km overland conveyor belts, it was a lot cheaper to build and operate one of them than to build a new processing plant and railway line.

It was about the relative cost of building a town, yes, absolutely – but then it became about the speed. With the boom ramping up and up, and no end in sight (it’s kinda still going, 25 years later), the ability to have an entire operation created and producing within a couple of years became the most important thing. And recruiting a workforce was far simpler, because you weren’t uprooting anyone’s family – Dad (and it was almost always Dad, then – now Mum is getting more common) was just getting on a plane.

The “locals” still disliked it – but they were now the existing towns, places like Karratha & Newman which had these artificial “Councils” and so a government bureaucrat layer that saw the FIFO’s come in but not really “expand” the town. And the nativism and autarky crowd always exist even at a local level, and have their own lobby groups, often now a weird hybrid of National Party with green pretensions.

But it’s probably now too big to be stopped – Anna Bligh (mentioned last week) was right – this is what people want to do, it’s what the companies want to do, and it works. And if we want towns instead, we need to change the law to make towns more feasible. But, from someone who did 25 years living in the towns and now 10 years FIFO, I can tell you it will be hard to persuade many of those families to give up city life.

Once more, I finish with an anecdote. When I lived in Paraburdoo, I worked with a bloke named Daryl – good guy, been around, solid values, nice family. He came to Para from Tasmania, where he’d met and married his wife. They drove into town, rather than flew, which was perhaps a mistake. When they crested the last rise on the 700km drive from Carnarvon (with NOTHING between apart from 2 roadhouses), they were presented with a vista of the town, nestled in its ancient river valley. I had always found it quite beautiful, honestly.

His wife’s jaw dropped, and she just said, “Oh. My. God”. They lasted two years.

(That’s actually Tom Price, but you get the picture…)