CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
In news that only accidentally made it in to the papers, it seems the all-powerful multinational mining corporations have begun a rapid automation of the high-paid Aussie jobs once used to justify their blatant tax-dodging operations.
As Australia’s hospitals and education systems buckle under the stress of yet-to-be-declared economic recession, the resources sector that holds both sides of our Federal and State Parliaments hostage have once again been able to keep their head low and avoid paying any form of royalties or tax for the billions of dollars worth of minerals that they tear out of the ground.
Even the mining corporations that are owned by Australian-born tycoons like Gina Rinehart are still based overseas, not that they really need to be, because the Federal Government would sooner begin testing nuclear bombs in the Barossa Valley before asking these billionaire families to pay their fair share.
While the likes of Norway and Qatar reap the benefits of having nationalised their oil industry that now pays for state of-the-art healthcare, infrastructure and education – Australia remains one of the few countries that just lets foreign corporations set up shop here to make billions out of our natural resources while recklessly polluting our basins and waterways – in exchange for generous political donations and a cashed up workforce on non-unionised human labourers.
However, it seems these corporations are even finding ways of skirting around paying for the humans.
This comes as a half-hearted industrial investigation gets underway into an iron ore train crash in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Mining giant Rio Tinto accidentally revealed that they are replacing Australian workers with automated robot technology, when they confirmed a driverless train had hit a set of stationary wagons about 80 kilometres outside Karratha.
A Rio Tinto spokesperson said the incident occurred just after midnight on Monday and that 22 wagons and three locomotives were impacted, they would not confirm whether or not a couple of humans with experience driving trains could’ve been helpful in preventing this incident.
“There were no people within the vicinity of the incident and no injuries,” said the spokesperson for the Spanish-based mining giant.
“Because we are using less and less workers. Because robots don’t ask for lunch breaks or air-conditioned demountable accomodation in the scorching Australian outback”
“Now please go back to worrying about youth crime and library books about same-sex relationships”
