General News
4 June, 2025
North West must cash in on crisis, says CopperString guru
The region must take advantage of the predicament it faces, which has brought national attention.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
That is the advice from one of the masterminds of CopperString as the North West faces economic uncertainty on a number of fronts.
Joseph O’Brien, who alongside his father John spent more than a decade lobbying for government support for the mammoth transmission line project, said the constant discussions over the copper smelter and CopperString served to inadvertently highlight the central importance of the North West to the state economy.
He said the renewed political focus on the region provided opportunities to lobby for long term infrastructure security.
“In some ways Glencore has done everyone a favour by making the future of the Mount Isa copper smelter one of the biggest issues going around at the moment,” Mr O’Brien told the Community Renewables Forum at Hughenden.
“It is certainly seen as an issue that is as big as it gets for the Queensland premier.
“The new state government has come in and backed the CopperString delivery as strongly as it possibly could in a political sense.
“There is an opportunity among all of these things for the region to keep driving hard for the issues that aren’t necessarily related to the copper smelter but also capture the opportunity that comes from the spotlight being so firmly on Townsville to Mount Isa at the moment.”
Mr O’Brien said any regionwide lobbying effort required a collaborative effort from all local stakeholders.
“There is a whole ecosystem of relationships with landowners and business owners and local government, where I think it can be asked whether you have written to the relevant minister or ask businesses to be put in contact with investors,” he said.
“There is a level of influence that may make no influence at all, but it also may also level up to be much greater than you think. Anyone who is really keen to do business in this region should also be willing to look at new ideas and even advocate for them.
“The advocacy of people who tend to get the audience of premiers and prime ministers fairly easily, when it is combined with grassroots political advocacy, can be very powerful.
“You might be surprised that some of the investors and business leaders are willing to put their shoulder to the wheel to make something happen.”
Mr O’Brien said all levels of government needed to show ‘courage’ in translating public policy into tangible infrastructure development.
“We have seen successive governments – and it did start with Julia Gillard, Anna Bligh, Annastacia Palaszczuk and now I think David Crisafulli is one of the strongest advocates for development along the Townsville to Mount Isa corridor. But it is almost like policy delivery is going in the opposite direction of policy objectives,” he told North West Weekly.
“You don’t see evidence of government delivering projects like their lives dependent on it.
“But I come out to places like Hughenden or to Mount Isa and people on the ground who live in these communities are talking like their lives depend on their projects – because that’s exactly how they feel.”