Hancock Energy is a Hancock Prospecting company.
Hello to all our pastoralists, small businessmen, explorers and miners and other regional Aussies, struggling with time taking government paperwork, and policies that don’t consider the people of our outback!
It’s fantastic to be welcoming you to the opening of the Bush Summit at Townsville. Townsville is where my mother served in World War 2, in the navy. The very lovely old buildings would have been here when my mother was walking the Townsville streets.
Although neither my mother or I were Queenslanders, we both grew up in the north, apart from when we were in boarding school. We both knew station life, I don’t need to tell you how hard it is at times. My mother and I loved the hard working, good natured, honourable people of the outback.
The Bush Summit, like defence, has become increasingly important as I hope it is one that enables those in the outback to be heard, rather than taken for granted and overlooked. No matter how hard we work, no matter how much we contribute, and that we have developed primary industries that shine on the global stage.
Our agricultural produce is amongst the best in the world, aren’t we fortunate to be able to enjoy, and our mining companies are world leaders. Again, lucky us, as that is the engine room of Australia and massively contributes more than all other industries combined, to give us the high living standards we currently have.
Thank you to all members of our primary industries. And to the many small and medium businesses they support.
Our standards of living are not an accident. They are the result of investment and our incredible people in our primary and related industries. Mining provides not only jobs that pay much more on average than the national average of salaries and wages, but massive export earnings, the largest of any industry, and taxation revenue too. Yes, without the billions in taxation revenue mining provides, providing for 65,000 police and 210,000 nurses each year, Australia would simply not be the same.
Too often mining is just thought of in economic terms, but mining and the businesses mining supports, helps to provide for our incredible veterans, people in trouble and needing emergency services, our hospitals and healthcare, our pensioners, even payments for uni students. And overlooked in this housing crisis, mining provides the materials required for houses, for instance copper for electricity and pipes for plumbing. If minerals are in short supply, the price goes up.
It is upon these primary industries that all other activity is built. We cannot have manufacturing without mining and agriculture. We cannot have healthcare without mining, including oil and gas. And we cannot have defence, which is meant to be the governments prime responsibility to its citizens, without the revenue creating industries and the many companies they support that contribute tax revenue.
It seems it is too easy for some to forget that every aspect of our lives is touched by either the mining or the agricultural industry. As you’d know, everything either has to be grown or mined, be it the food on our tables, the energy used to transport, refrigerate and cook it, or the utensils used to eat it, and much more.
These Bush Summits are a refreshing opportunity to hear from those in the bush, and I hope with the help of the Bush Summit media, that our governments listen.
This is our time to let our politicians know we don’t want to go down as an industry or country, we want to go up. We want to see policies that don’t frighten away investment, instead lead to increased investment, increased living standards, and more in your pocket after tax, to spend as you wish. We want to hear from pollies that they will be the leaders that deliver the up.
We’ve sure had enough of the “down”. The down makes many parents worry for the future of their children and grandchildren. And many in agriculture worry if the agricultural industry can even survive.
Down will continue if we don’t cut government approvals and tape, that add costs and delays. But it’s not just businesses that are hurt. Given these expensive government burdens, there’s less money available for wages and staff benefits, less money available for employing more staff, less money available for training or retraining, less money for donating to charities or for research. And it worsens if expansions or new projects are delayed or lost thanks to government tape and slow approvals, as all of the above consequences get even worse. Let’s stop the view that government burdens don’t matter, they only affect businesses, they don’t, they add costs to all, and many people suffer.
The Minerals Council of Australia has recently estimated that we are missing out on some $68 billion of investment because our major mining projects are “increasingly put in the too-hard basket because of the challenging investment environment in Australia”.
The MCA found that only 5 per cent of projects at the feasibility stage will move to a favourable financial decision each year, and that only 20 per cent of projects that debut on Australia’s major projects list are actually progressed to completion, while 80 per cent are abandoned altogether. Not the pipeline of projects list our media or pollies talk about, when 80 percent are abandoned!
Without lessening government tape and abandoning negative policies, this situation will only get worse.
And we all know of the rising costs of living. I especially feel during these rising costs for all those trapped in poverty on pensions of one type or another, our 2.5 million pensioners, veterans, uni students and disabled, not permitted to work without onerous paperwork, and then only permitted a few hours per week. Each of these people should be permitted to work as long as they’d like, so they are not trapped unable to cope with the rising costs crisis.
Too many in our country are with these government restrictions wrongly facing “heat or eat”. This is unacceptable; our politicians should act immediately. And we have a worker shortage crisis, scarcely helped by expensive immigration, while making it difficult for our own Aussies to work if they chose. Let’s not forget, the approx. one million migrants this government has brought in, resulted in only approx. 40,000 added to the workforce. Yet, causing many disadvantages, the nearly one million people adding to our housing crisis, increasing the cost of rentals, straining police with more crime resulting, and increased delays into hospitals, even being turned away from emergency, as our doctors, nurses, medical facilities simply can’t cope. And longer waiting times for medical attention.
If only our governments would truly consider the farmers, pastoralists and many struggling, instead of nice sounding words, even saying they like visiting up here and meeting country people. We don’t want empty words, we want to know taxes that were to be dropped when GST came in, payroll, licence fees and stamp tax will be dropped. Wouldn’t that help the cost of living. We want to hear that the federal government will drop its excise tax on fuel, not just lowering costs for our cars and other vehicles, but lowering the cost of all transported goods, and all goods that require fuel for their processing or manufacture! Removing excise duty on fuel would actually help the cost of housing crisis, rather than the government building housing, when the record of government building infrastructure yells, big mistake, too inefficient and expensive!
We are unfortunately on the “down” path. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that we have now seen five consecutive quarters of negative economic growth per person.
Let’s instead lift our country “up”.
Please use your time and voices, at every opportunity, for Australia to return to this “up” path.
My voice will outline 5 major priorities for our governments as the bush Summit travels from Townsville to Port Hedland. Starting here in Townsville.
The first is perhaps the most important, our defence, because if we don’t have our country, what future do we have. This should be the prime duty of our governments, boy have they all let us down.
In my view we should call for
I understand that building a defence industry is one of the things uppermost in this regions minds, well, you don’t need to struggle with government tape and delays to achieve this very worthwhile objective, but you do need to let the governments know, special economic zones at least in your area, should proceed, just as they have successfully in more than 8,000 places around the world. There used to be tax rebates for people working in the north, all those above the 26th deserve this, I suggest you chase this to be reinstituted promptly.
I’ll state the other priorities as I see them, as the Bush Summit travels to each destination.
And please don’t forget to join us at this year’s National Agriculture and National Mining and Related Industries Days, this year to be held at Penfolds and Santos, with more information on the screen. These are important national days, they are your days, November 21 and 22 each year, please make sure they’re in your calendar. Hope to see you there.
Thank you.
Hancock Energy is a Hancock Prospecting company.
