Thursday, December 01, 2011

Miners invest, Minerals Council sledges "socioeconomic policy agenda"

The government has hailed new mining investment figures as a “resounding vote of confidence” as the industry itself complains about an “increasingly regressive shift in Australia's socioeconomic policy agenda”.

Business investment climbed 12 per cent in the September quarter and 31 per cent over the year to September - the fastest growth on record. Mining investment surged 22 per cent in the quarter and 60 per cent over the year. Manufactuing investment jumped 10 per cent in the quarter and around 30 pc over the year.

“This is are a resounding vote of confidence in the future of our economy,” said Treasurer Wayne Swan. “They underscore our fundamental strengths and help demonstrate why we are better placed than just about anyone in the face of the current global instability.”

The Bureau of Statistics figures follow Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics calculations putting committed resource investments at a record $232 billion. A further $224 billion in investment is planned but not yet committed.

“Of course we can expect to see some lumpiness in investment as we go forward due to the massive scale of individual projects,” the Treasurer said. “But there is no doubt the mining industry has a very bright future and is continuing to power ahead.”

Minerals Council chief Mitch Hooke as sounded a more bitter note in an email to full and associate members...

“The increasingly regressive shift in Australia's socioeconomic policy agenda is quite rightly starting to get significant public media air play,” he writes in the memo dated Friday November 25.

Of concern is the “greater emphasis on the reallocation and redistribution of wealth [rather] than building the productive capacity of the economy - carving up the pie, than growing it”.

The email bemoans “the convenience of demonising the resources sector as the political scapegoat for the inevitable pressures of Australia's economic structural adjustment, and as the substance to the politics of envy and class warfare”.

Government intervention is increasingly focused on “a predilection that government's know better than efficiently functioning markets”. Reinstitutionalised union involvment in commercial decision making is “reestablishing in the bargaining process a legitimacy for matters not directly relating to the employment relationship”.

On average firms upgraded their planned spending this financial year by 6 per cent to planned growth of 35 per cent over the financial year, well in excess of the 14 per cent predicted in Tuesday’s mid-year budget update.

The results strengthened speculation about a very strong September quarter economic growth figure due next Wednesday, with some predictions as high as a rebound of 1 per cent.

Published in today's SMH





From: Mitchell Hooke [mailto:Mitchell.Hooke@minerals.org.au]
Sent: Friday, 25 November 2011 7:46 AM
Subject: The emerging contest to the regressive public policy environment!

TO: FULL AND ASSOCIATE MEMBERS OF THE MINERALS COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA
CORPORATE AFFAIRS GROUP

The increasingly regressive shift in Australia's socio-economic policy
agenda is quite rightly starting to get significant public media air
play as concern within the business community increases and as the
contest becomes more acute for intellectual capital among the key
opinion leaders.

Accordingly, I thought you might appreciate a copy of the speech Gary
Banks, Chairman, Productivity Commission, gave to the ACCI 2011 Annual
Dinner on Wednesday evening last, which resonates strongly with the
MCA's views and advocacy platform.

As I'm sure you appreciate, we are increasingly concerned, and
therefore focussed in our advocacy efforts, at the profound shift in
the national public policy climate confronting the minerals industry.
Quite simply, the policy circumstances have profoundly shifted from
the opportunity costs of the "passive failures" of economic reform
inertia in addressing capacity constraints, to the adversity of the
"active threats" of the regression to what some commentators liken to
"the toxic norms of the 1970's" - the time of the last significant
commodities boom.

The key drivers being:

* greater emphasis on the reallocation and redistribution of
wealth than building the productive capacity of the economy - carving
up the pie, than growing it.

* the convenience of demonising the resources sector as the
political scapegoat for the inevitable pressures of Australia's
economic structural adjustment, and as the substance to the politics
of envy and class warfare.

* the re-institutionalisation of union third party direct
involvement in the commercial decision making of companies -
compromising workplace flexibility, principally direct relationships
between the employer and the employee, and re-establishing in the
bargaining process, a legitimacy for matters not directly relating to
the employment relationship.

* increasing Government intervention in the market - greater
regulation - and with increasing emphasis in State Constitutional
responsibilities - founded in a predilection that Government's know
better than efficiently functioning markets, and that the legitimate
cause of national consistency/harmonisation is better effected through
centralised control than an efficiently functioning federation, and

* an emerging protectionist sentiment justifying direct or
quasi industry assistance as a political defence to, rather than
effectively targeted transitional assistance to enable industry's to
better adjust.


Those of you who attended the MCA Full Council meeting in Sydney in
mid October, will recall that the "shifting sands" of the public
policy agenda and the misguided focus on the "ill effects" of the
resources boom, was central to the Council's discussions.

Next week the MCA Board will consider the Council's Business Plan and
Budget for next year, a central component of which is our policy
advocacy strategy and tactics in this space.

We will keep you posted on developments.




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