MINERAL EXPLORATION

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (14:21): My question is for the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy. Can the minister inform the house on how this government seeks to foster continued exploration investment throughout the state?

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Manufacturing, Innovation and Trade, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business) (14:21): He is the only man we are afraid of! I thank the member for his question and his keen interest in building the state's prosperity.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: South Australia is firmly positioned as a major destination for investment in minerals exploration. ABS figures show combined spending on minerals and petroleum exploration for the 2011 calendar year totalled a whopping $454 million. The mineral exploration spend was up 65.5 per cent on the previous calendar year, reaching $312 million, a truly outstanding result that puts us back near our pre-global financial crisis heights.

In 2011, ABS figures showed that the value of minerals exported from South Australia totalled a record $4.2 billion. That sort of performance has assisted South Australia in achieving some of the fastest export growth in Australia. New results to hand show mineral production for the 2011 calendar year reached a record $5.5 billion, up from $4 billion in 2010.

It is this type of growth that is driving the state forward into a new direction of wealth and prosperity that will result in an even greater standard of living for generations to come, and it is this type of growth that this Labor government continues to foster.

The government is committed to expanding our growing minerals industry to ensure all South Australians have the ability to benefit from our minerals boom. That is why we are committed to encouraging further exploration. At the South Australian Resource and Energy Investment Conference we announced the latest round of PACE 2020 funding. This round will see 26 resource exploration projects share in $1.7 million in grants to assist funding proposals that include new targets and new exploration concepts across a wide range of resources.

In addition to the funding provided by the PACE Discovery Drilling grants, the industry will spend a further estimated $5.07 million on exploration, bringing an estimated total exploration spend of $7.7 million. These proposals comprise 37 mineral projects and three petroleum projects in areas of the state, including the highly prospective Gawler Craton, the Cooper and Lake Eyre Basins and the Curnamona and Musgrave Provinces. The scope of the projects funded in this round are very encouraging and clearly demonstrate the success of PACE 2020 in generating worldwide interest in South Australia as an investment destination.

These latest grants build on a successful history of co-investment with previous PACE drilling program success stories, including: the Carrapateena copper-gold-uranium prospect; Iluka Resources' two mineral sands projects; the Four Mile uranium project, which was one of the biggest finds in uranium in the last 25 years; Tasman's Vulcan iron ore, copper, gold prospect; and, of course, Challenger gold mine's expansion.

The millions of dollars being spent on exploring this state, unleashed by the Plan for Accelerating Exploration and our pro-mining policies, has put us in a position where some of the most significant mineral discoveries either underway or nearing production are here in South Australia. Olympic Dam has been a very large discovery and a very important economic discovery for the state.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I know.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes; I was eight.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for MacKillop, order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: This requires explorers, large and small, to take a risk in joining to find other deposits like Olympic Dam. To encourage them, we need policies to do precisely what we are doing, and these programs, such as PACE 2020, and the certainty provided by the best practice regulatory framework in the world, gives them that certainty to go out and take that risk, and we share that risk with them.