The committee’s recommendation 12 is, in part, that the government remove the FBT exempt status of FIFO/drive-in drive-out work camps co-located with regional towns, and that it remove the exempt status of travel to and from the workplace for operational phases of regional mining projects.

The recommendation also suggests the government remove impediments to the provision of residential housing in regional communities.

The irony of such a move is delicious. Talk to those in the resources game who have been around long enough and they will tell you it was the introduction of FBT in 1986 that helped force resources companies towards FIFO in the first place.

The idea is to push the mining companies to develop regional towns near their deposits.

This is a great idea in theory, but here is why it will not work.

Back in the day when miners were creating towns such as Wickham, Newman and Tom Price, the mine lives were counted in decades.

Look at iron ore, which is what those towns were built to exploit. These days some of the deposits are only sufficient to support a couple of years of development.

Is a miner supposed to set up a town just to support that? All this will mean will be a landscape dotted with ghost towns.

Okay, the committee also recommends finding ways to make housing more affordable in some of the towns near enough to the resource projects to make a difference. But that is not really going to help.

The issue of getting people to go to these regions will still remain. As has been shown in the past, the people in the eastern states are just not prepared to give up their latte lifestyles to live and work in remote mining areas.

The committee’s intentions are good, of that there is no doubt. FIFO is a huge problem for regional communities, particularly in the country’s north.

However, this attempt to take away the FBT concessions is crazy. The stupidity of this move is plain to see.

Why would a mining company look to exploit further deposits if it is going to be slugged with a tax to get its workers there or the cost of building a town that may only be viable for a couple of years?

Why not look to other countries where there are none of these impediments? That is what some of the major miners will do if the costs get too high for them here.

Another problem with this FBT push is the thought that flying up to a mine site is a “benefit”

RSM Bird Cameron director Rami Brass, who lectures Institute of Chartered Accountants members on FBT laws, said there was no way the flight to the mine site and accommodation on site could be considered a benefit.

For one thing, the worker’s main place of residence is somewhere else.

“The whole idea of FBT is to tax the employer on benefits provided to the employee,” he said.

“There is no way you could consider the provision of accommodation to an employee when they are working 12 hours a day in a remote area, to be a benefit.

“To remove that concession is ridiculous.”

Brass also pointed to a change in the family dynamics since the 1980s when FBT created FIFO.

“Back in the 1960s and ’70s the man was the main breadwinner,” he said.

“Their spouses have their own careers now and may not be prepared to make a move.”

Another one of the committee’s recommendations is the provision of a zone tax offset to make living in remote areas more attractive.

This harks back to the old north of the 26th parallel tax concessions.

Perhaps the industry should not be surprised, especially when committee chairman Tony Windsor keeps referring to FIFO as a “cancer”

It also is not surprising given that such a suggestion would come from a committee that is predominantly made up of politicians from the eastern states.

FIFO is predominantly a Western Australian issue. It is starting to become an issue in Queensland and is used in South Australia and the Northern Territory too but must seem foreign to those from states where major towns have formed near their mining industries.

The only regular committee member from WA is Kalgoorlie MP Barry Haase.

At this stage FBT on FIFO is only a recommendation but watch this space. The Minerals Resource Rent Tax was once just a recommendation too.