Future Critical: how Australia can meet the minerals investment challenge Tania Constable, Chief Executive Officer Minerals Council of Australia
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ustralia’s mining industry has been a vital contributor to the economy, mining regions and local communities over the last two decades. The major expansion in mining driven by Asia’s economic growth transformed the economy. This has left Australia at the frontier of global mining and positioned the industry as a significant driver of productivity growth.
The MCA’s most recent publication, Future Critical: Meeting the minerals investment challenge, highlights the importance of the Australian mining industry to the economy, the opportunity that lies ahead, and the critical role of policy settings in attracting new investment.
Australia must act urgently if it is to benefit from the next resources boom.
The world must undergo an extraordinary deployment of clean energy within the next two and a half decades, along with a potentially massive increase in global production of the material inputs required to manufacture the necessary technologies and infrastructure.
Australia must get the policy settings right to attract investment in mining and the downstream processing and advanced manufacturing it enables. Without the correct policy settings, the opportunity presented by increasing global demand for the minerals, metals and energy commodities needed for the world to get to net zero emissions will be lost. After all, Australia does well when Australian minerals do well. 20
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Addressing Australia's declining reputation for investors Australia’s attractiveness as a place to do business is no longer assured. Rising costs, declining productivity and increasing policy risk are impacting investment decisions. Australia’s vulnerability to competition from resource-rich economies is only growing as other countries seek to seize the opportunity to supply the minerals and metals needed to achieve global net zero emissions.
Australia is fortunate to have the mineral resources, stable political system, world-leading exploration geoscience, and the processing technologies and environmental management systems needed to help meet this growing demand.
The importance of having secure, resilient supply chains and transparent, well-functioning markets for minerals and metals has never been higher — Australia’s comparative advantage in mining positions it firmly as a strategic partner in clean energy supply chains. However, due to intense competition from other resource-rich countries, mining investment cannot be taken for granted. Dramatic, short-term interventions by federal and state governments are resetting trader partner and investor perceptions of Australia’s mining industry. The Australian government has a clear role in providing policy settings that improve investment conditions for mining if capital is to flow to the strongest projects and provide the surest path to long-term industry growth, the jobs it creates and the higher incomes it generates. The last major expansion in mining demonstrates the massive contribution mining can make to Traditional Owners, communities, regions, the national economy, and government budgets. Harnessing the next opportunity to attract investment will enable these significant benefits to continue well into the future. As global demand for minerals and metals intensifies and other resource-rich countries respond, time is running out for Australia to catch the next wave of mining investment.
