Regional Mining Industry Employment

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:30): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister update the house as to how the mining sector is contributing to regional employment in South Australia?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:30): Thank you very much, member for Colton. I really do appreciate the question. It's terrific to have a question like that coming from a metropolitan member interested in regional employment, as we all are on this side of the chamber. We are very focused on the entire state. So thank you, member for Colton, for your interest in this.

We went to the last election with a focus on jobs, reducing the cost of electricity, jobs, growing exports, and jobs. We have a very, very strong focus on job creation, and we are very pleased to partner with the resources industry, with the mining industry, to create jobs. Those jobs will be focused in Adelaide and in regional South Australia, but the member asked about regional jobs particularly. One of the fantastic things about the resources sector is that we often focus on the direct employment—for example, 5,000 people are directly employed in the mining industry in copper—but the mining industry itself also supports the METS sector.

It supports a wide range of service sectors to the mining industry, and that can be extended all the way through to the corner milk bar, hypothetically. It supports employment for Aboriginal people and, growingly and importantly, it supports employment for women in regional areas, too. We have some companies in South Australia that are outstanding with regard to their focus on providing equal opportunity and broadening the diversity of their workforce in mining areas.

This is a very important thing for us. We have too many people leaving regional South Australia for the city, and too many people leaving regional South Australia for other states and often overseas as well. The fact that we have employers growing the economy of regional South Australia through the mining industry is very welcome. Mr Speaker, you know that we support the mining industry when it is environmentally responsible, when it is responsible with regard to the safety of the people who work on or near the mines and when those operations are welcomed by their host communities. Within that, let's have as many jobs as possible in the mining industry in regional South Australia.

It is absolutely outstanding to be able to do that. Members on both sides of the chamber who were here before the last election will remember that with bipartisan support we put through legislation in this parliament that enabled renewable energy developments on pastoral leases in South Australia. Why is that important? Because that allows opportunities to get energy and electricity to remote mining ventures. It is very important that you get electricity, water and other things to a mine. The ability to build a wind farm or a solar farm and put up batteries in remote pastoral locations where very often there are mining opportunities is going to be very important for creating employment not only in regional, as in country, areas but also in much more remote places.

Very importantly, it is also able to keep the cost of that development down because no longer will it be automatically necessary that we have a high-voltage transmission line going to the mine, as we do at Olympic Dam, for example. It is very likely that there will be a much cheaper and easier way, and a far more environmentally responsible way, to get electricity to these mine sites to allow them to flourish, to allow them to employ South Australians in regional areas and to allow them to contribute to our entire economy not only with local employment but also with international exports.