opinion
Rebecca Tomkinson: We need a plan to take Australian resources sector into challenges of new world order

Building a West Australian resources sector capable of injecting more than $150 billion into the national economy in a single year did not happen overnight. It is the result of more than a century of investment, made possible only through foresight, forward planning and stable and attractive policy settings. At times, it has required bold and decisive government action. Indeed, the biggest inflection points in WA’s economic fortunes have followed a calculated leap of faith. C.Y. O’Connor’s “scheme of madness” to pipe water hundreds of kilometres from Perth to the Goldfields. The Menzies government’s decision to overturn the war-time ban on the export of iron ore in the 1960s. Using public funds to build the Dampier to Bunbury pipeline — and committing WA to purchasing 20 years of gas from the nascent North West Shelf. Each decision unlocked a wave of investment in new industries that today underpin our world-leading standard of living. Like clockwork, through good times and bad, tens of billions of dollars now flow from WA’s mines and offshore platforms into homes, businesses and government budgets. Consider: the record $150 billion outlay for 2023-24 captured in the Chamber of Mineral and Energy’s most recent Economic Contribution survey is enough to pay for Metronet 11 times over. That money supports hundreds of thousands of families and small businesses, not just here in WA but right across the country. It props up the State and Federal budgets, funding police and teachers and Medicare and our path to AUKUS. It supports community organisations — more than 2100 last year — to care for people and country and increase access to sport, the arts and education. It is a truly staggering level of expenditure. It shouldn’t be taken for granted. Unfortunately, there are mounting signs it may be. The energy transition should make WA a global hotspot for a new wave of growth and investment. Instead, sections of our sector are in a battle for survival. Commodity cycles are playing a role. Over the past 18 months, both lithium and nickel have endured a sustained downturn. But many of the challenges are within our control. Skyrocketing electricity prices. Blowouts to project approvals. Retrograde industrial relations changes. Uncertainty over sweeping environmental reforms. Each of these things impacts our ability to simply maintain the upstream mining activities that have formed the bedrock of our economy for generations. In combination, they are anathema to grand aspirations to lure more manufacturing to our shores. They are also all symptoms of a broader issue: there is no cohesive, bipartisan strategy guiding the development of Australian industry. What are our natural advantages? How do we sustain them? What emerging opportunities can we exploit? What weaknesses do we need to address? We have a patchwork of plans — some of them contradicted by our actions — but no integrated industrial policy. We have a Future Gas Strategy that talks up the importance of new supply yet it takes more than six years to approve an extension to the life of a gas plant central to our energy security. A Future Made in Australia framework offering incentives — important as they are — for industries that largely don’t yet exist while we place burden after burden on those that do. A WA Government supportive of carbon capture, utilisation and storage to speed our path to net zero but a Commonwealth hesitant to embrace the proven abatement technology. Absent a whole-of-economy blueprint mapping out our long-term ambitions — and sending a clear signal to investors — Australia has become listless, a victim of the fleeting whims of election cycles. The imperative to decarbonise — and Australia’s unrivalled access to wind, solar and firming generation in the form of gas — opened a door to the re-industrialisation of this country. We wasted a decade staring at that door without taking a meaningful step through it. In that time, an historic strength — cheap electricity and gas — has become a liability. This is the inevitable result of an energy debate fractured by politics and ideology when it should be grounded in just two things: science and economics. The WA Government has made a more concerted effort but the pace of progress remains too slow. For a long time, our place in the world has been relatively simple. Australia has done incredibly well sending raw materials overseas and bringing some of them back as finished goods. In a world committed to the principles of free trade, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But that world is shifting and changing before our eyes. We urgently need a plan for this new reality. Without one, we are a rudderless ship adrift a turbulent ocean. Rebecca Tomkinson is Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of WA.

opinion
Rebecca Tomkinson: We need a plan to take Australian resources sector into challenges of new world order

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opinionRebecca Tomkinson: We need a plan to take Australian resources sector into challenges of new world order

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opinion
Rebecca Tomkinson: We need a plan to take Australian resources sector into challenges of new world order