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Hello dear Pilbararites!

And welcome guests to the engine room of West Australia, and indeed of Australia. An engine room that contributes significantly to Australia. According to the CME, the iron ore industry in WA alone provides some 16 percent of all federal corporate income and fringe benefits tax receipts.

And that’s before the myriad of other tax revenue contributions.

Please join me in a huge round of applause to everyone working in the Pilbara.

Over the past decade, our mining industry more broadly has provided trillions in export earnings, supporting many Aussie businesses and paying $252 billion in wages and $357 billion in taxes and royalties along the way.

Taxes and royalties that enable us to provide for nurses, police, defence, albeit unrealistically and irresponsibly limited, veterans, elderly, emergency services and more.

Which services would you like cut, without the mining industry revenue, and, how much more tax would you like to pay?

Let’s keep uppermost in our minds, and encourage others too, why jeopardise this bonanza, why kill the geese laying the golden eggs?

Who doesn’t know the iron ore price is going down and is likely to stay there for an unknown but lengthy period. What does this mean for our golden goose, it means that the higher cost producers will have to cut staff numbers and or go out of business, in turn dropping revenue.

How could they stay in business longer? Simple: the government taxes that were meant to be dropped when GST came in, that you’ve probably heard me speak about too many times, if such taxes were dropped, companies could operate longer and retain their staff for longer too.

For example, payroll tax, Australia exports some 950 million tonnes of iron ore per annum translating to approximately $700 million in payroll tax from WA producers.

Dropping that $700 mill payroll tax is the equivalent of enabling an opportunity to save approximately 3,500 jobs, and, the revenue those employees could produce.

The fact is, excess tax is not just a problem for businesses, it actually relates to being able to maintain employing people, and the benefits companies can afford for their employees.

Please get comfortable, I haven’t finished yet!

But to save you just from looking at me, now appearing on our screens is last November’s National Mining and Related Industries Day, that we were proud to host in the Pilbara, including holding the annual gala dinner at Roy Hill.

Maybe not too comfortable, you’ll see Pierre, Canada’s leader of the opposition, in this film. If he gets in, the competition Canada provides already for investment and against our primary industries, will escalate.

I want to take this Bush Summit opportunity to thank all those politicians, including those running to become politicians, who understand the ‘up’ path, who understand the need to make investment and projects welcome if we want to improve our standards of living.

And for their dedication to the ‘up path’, requiring not words but significant cutting of government tape, to see more investment and projects proceed to development instead of many years of government caused delays and expense, and losing projects to countries overseas.

The ‘up path’ enables the ability to pay higher wages, and the ‘up path’ enables you to keep more in your pocket after tax, to spend as you would want.

Unfortunately, it seems that our mindset is currently on the ‘down path’, clouded somewhat in non-reality. You can see this in the huge decline in investment and the reality of the pipeline of projects.

According to the MCA only 20 percent of the pipeline of major resources projects now get through the increased government tape to deliver development and consequent high paying jobs and more. This is reality. And the consequences should be obvious.

According to the MCA, Australia is currently losing out on $68 billion of investment each year given major projects not proceeding, and consequently missing out on billions of missed tax revenue.

Minerals aren’t like fleece on the backs of sheep, growing automatically each year, you simply have to invest in more mines each year, each decade, if you want to retain revenue streams and living standards. Isn’t it time for reality?

Here in the Pilbara our state has benefited from the largest mining companies in the world, lifting West Australia from being a mendicant or state needing handouts as couldn’t support itself, to one that is not. One that instead helps to support other states.

Yet BHP is investing hundreds of miles into the arctic circle, into a mine that given the extreme weather, can only operate up to three months each year!

BHP has invested billions into successful world class railways, towns, infrastructure right here in Port Hedland and in the Pilbara, a small part of which you can see this visit, investment that has brought huge benefits for our country. And yet now BHP sees it wise to invest in an extreme weather place it can only operate three months a year.

Why aren’t we asking ourselves, what are we doing wrong? It doesn’t stop at BHP. Rio has similarly announced instead of proceeding with all their planned productive investment in WA, they will reduce this by $2 billion, fully maintaining their carbon reduction related billions of investment.

Rio have been amazing, investing productive billions in Pilbara where it has successful world class ports and gigantic infrastructure, and huge untapped ore resources, off it goes to invest we’re told $6 billion in Simandou, Guinea.

What does that do for Aussie high paid mining jobs, revenue, opportunities? Nothing.

That significant investment benefit is going offshore, to a country where Rio have had to repeatedly evacuate, given the repetitive violent civil disruptions, and to a country where, do they have any real idea how long their shareholders investment will guarantee the asset they invest billions in will remain part Rio’s?

We can’t blame the multinational companies for doing what they see is in their shareholders’ interests, but why are we pretending all is ok, this doesn’t matter, not recognising these future billions and billions of revenue over decades now won’t be available here, and, why aren’t we doing something about it.

Where is the red carpet for the BHPs and Rios, who’ve invested in our country and created and enabled for us Aussies so much? We’ve had huge warnings, isn’t it time to face reality and act?

Even our mining friends in Canada say they only have approx. a quarter of the approvals we have, so in comparison, Canada has its red carpet out! And that’s under Trudeau. Pierre you know that leader who wants to bring back common sense, his Canadian red carpet will be a bonanza!

But not for Australia.

This mindset change that is needed should also include the government’s most important responsibility, and that is the defence of our country. It’s no good having the resources in the Pilbara unless we can export them and receive revenue from them, hence we should have defence to keep our railways and ports open, and our vital sea lanes.

You may ponder, and how do we pay for this defence? We’re already in record debt with huge government spending. Borrowing an important phrase, “dig baby dig!” Get rid of the government obstacles delaying development, and instead turn into revenue urgently.

We should also have learned from Ukraine that warfare is changing, and hence our defence thinking needs to change too. One glaring example is Ukraine-made war drones costing little but destroying a $1 billion Russian naval ship. We need defence investment that works today.

So, surrounding this vital Pilbara engine we should have the protective iron domes like the ones in Israel, plus war drones and smart sea mines, plenty of them, and similarly across our sea lanes and ports and some islands, from the north west through to the north east.

We can’t ignore that we have only seven days of fuel reserve in Australia. It is critical that we can keep our sea lanes open to receive fuel, be that from Singapore, USA, or elsewhere.

We may have the attitude, let’s not spend on our defence, let’s rely on the USA, but how would that work in reality if we can’t protect our sea lanes and ports so they can enable fuel, defence equipment and heavy supplies from the USA to reach us.

We are here at the Bush Summit to learn and to think. Not to ask for government, that is, taxpayer, handouts.

These handouts are incredibly inefficient, given how much really trickles down from Canberra or other capital cities and through the various government agencies till they reach the publicised recipient.

Handouts may be popular for pollies wanting votes, and bureaucracies wanting to get larger, but instead, we need the reduction of input costs, the elimination of payroll tax, stamp tax, license fees, as was promised decades ago when GST came in.

Plus think how much it would help everyone around Australia if the excise tax on fuel was eliminated, helping especially those struggling with the increasing costs of living, and the too many struggling or failing businesses.

These are matters that should be front and centre of this Bush Summit. We need to get down to what needs to be done, as frankly an avalanche of dangerous policies, increases in the size and expense of our governments, saddling future generations with the burden of record debt, increasing governments bureaucratic reach with ever increasing tape, is in reality not good for our future or that of our children and grandchildren.

We’ve heard our farmers and pastoralists are struggling, we’ve heard this for some years now, but what are we actually doing other than loading them with more government tape and more bad policies, as though we want to end an industry we daily rely upon.

An industry whose people and high quality produce we should be proud of. I know the terrific Tony Seabrook, dedicated president of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, isn’t he fantastic! has addressed you passionately and rationally on this.

He knows his stuff. He actually lives it. Every day. Not like city dwellers in Canberra or state parliaments who “can’t tell chickpeas from oats”. Hope your ears were wide open for Tony’s address!

In this Bush Summit series, I’ve spoken in Townsville about increasing our defence, in Bendigo about improving our curriculum and education, in Launceston about cutting the size, expense, and intrusion of government, and in Orange about ensuring we have reliable, and abundant energy.

These are the three essential areas that our governments must do much, much better in to ensure that Australia is returned to the ‘up’ path, plus defence if we want to safeguard our nation.

Defence is the primary responsibility of our government. If we don’t have our country, then we have nothing.

Just on that, media love to misquote me, I never said that males under 53 must have military training, this is not feasible, nor did I ever mention fitness training, I actually said males in the defence department under say the age of 53, must have military training. A number of benefits, including our defence personnel numbers are declining to grossly inadequate numbers.

Could you please join me in massive applause for those serving and for our fantastic veterans.

The beneficial education of our children and grandchildren is critical. This not only means equipping them with real facts and knowledge and the ability to think for themselves and use logic and rationale, it also means not instilling them with the feelings that they need to be ashamed of our country, and it’s history, the pioneers and their families who worked incredibly hard to give us the nation we can enjoy today.

It means raising a generation of young people who want to work for their own future, not filled with frightening propaganda that the world is so exposed to climate change it will end in five to ten years. Why even do your homework, children ask?

The size, expense, and intrusion of government has all grown massively in recent times, adding to businesses costs, record business failures, rising housing costs and our own living costs, and delaying revenue earning projects. This is a danger to our living standards. A danger we have to recognise and diminish.

It should never be forgotten that governments only consume wealth, they don’t create it. We need to help change the mindset because too many seem to have forgotten this.

Access to cheap and reliable energy is what has allowed human beings to lift themselves out of abject poverty and to obtain the standards of living we have today.

Please think of this fact, helpfully noted by the scientist and author Vaclav Smil: In 1800, using humans and animals, it took 10 minutes of human labour to produce a kilogram of grain. In 2021, with mechanised farming using fossil fuels and fertilisers produced by fossil fuels, it requires only 2 seconds to produce a kilogram of grain.

This means there has been a 300-fold increase in the efficiency of grain production per human hour.

And this has been achieved because of access to reliable and abundant energy. Access our governments are now mistakenly choosing to throw away.

The truth needs to be known, the so-called sustainable energy can’t underpin our base power load requirements, the sun doesn’t always shine, wind doesn’t always blow, the additional capital to try to hook this in will be humongous.

Different sources of energy are simply not the same when we measure how often they are able to produce electricity over a given period of time. In Australia solar panels generate electricity for about 20-25% of the year, wind is only a little better, typically it has a “capacity factor” between 30-40%.

Hydropower can be a little better again, perhaps generating power 50% of the time – although we’ve all read about the challenges of Snowy Hydro 2 which is currently predicted to start seven years late at a mind-boggling cost in excess of $22 billion!

Compare those to coal and natural gas. These thermal power plants typically have capacity factors between 70-90% because they can generate electricity consistently as long as fuel is available.

And although it’s not here – well not yet – nuclear power would be the best of the lot operating over 90% of the time as it requires less maintenance and is designed to operate for longer stretches.

The consequences for not only our own living standards, but for billions of people around the world if their governments insist upon unreliable inadequate electricity, need to be rationally recognised. Including in our education system.

So please join me in calling for a return to the ‘up path’. Join me in calling on our politicians, and those in the media, that we need sensible responsible action that will lift Australia and all Australians up, not more and more expensive, intrusive government.

This will mean we need more people from our primary industries to stand to be elected for our parliaments and truly stand up for our essential primary industries, and the many related businesses they support.

Our north could be used as an example, a leadership role. Whoever ends up gaining government at the next elections, please commit to implement ANDEV policies, low tax, no FBT, low government tape, in a special economic zone, like more than 8,000 such economic zones which operate very successfully around the world, but sadly not in Australia.

This could be introduced for above the 26th parallel, across northern Australia, and those on wages and salaries earnt in the north, receive a greater tax rebate to encourage them to live and save and invest here, enjoying more after-tax income and providing there is no fringe benefits tax, better worker benefits.

Please join us for National Agriculture and Mining and Related Industries Days, November 21 and 22, this year in Adelaide at Penfolds, and Santos. Hope you enjoyed National Mining Day in Pilbara last year!

Thank you.