Resources Sector

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:21): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister update the house about the growth in the resources sector?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:21): Thank you, member for Morphett. Yes, I can update the house about the growth in the resources sector. I appreciate the member for Morphett's great interest and support for the resources sector, including his accompanying me and other colleagues of ours to Moomba and some other resources locations recently. We received record royalties in the last financial year: $300.1 million of royalties were paid to the South Australian taxpayer from the resources industry, and forecasts continue to increase.

The resources sector contributes enormously in many ways. It contributes with regard to employment, with regard to capital expenditure, with regard to regional development and with regard to royalties, which of course contribute to government provision of very important infrastructure and services: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, nurses, police, disability services, mental health care and all those sorts of things. So the resources sector growth is something that we should all be very pleased with—and we are seeing growth.

The Premier and I, and other members of parliament, were with Santos last night to celebrate their 65^th anniversary as a great South Australian company. More importantly, last night it was the 50^th anniversary of the Adelaide to Moomba pipeline—in fact, I should say the Moomba to Adelaide pipeline because that's where the gas goes. It is a tremendous piece of infrastructure based on the resources sector.

Santos is going from strength to strength, and Beach Energy is going from strength to strength. In fact, Beach is seeing record production and record safety performance at the moment, which is something that all people would be very proud of. Cooper Energy, Senex Energy, all in the Cooper Basin, and Beach as well, in the South-East of South Australia, are all contributing to the areas in which they operate, plus the state more broadly.

From a minerals perspective, members would be very well aware of BHP's tremendous contribution: their in excess of 30-year history in South Australia and their extraordinary exploration find at Oak Dam West, not too far from BHP's Olympic Dam mine. But there are many others—many other organisations have truly outstanding exploration figures at the moment.

Exploration permits and permissions from the state government have increased again this year on last year, and we know that the more exploration is undertaken the more finds there will be, the more production there will be, the more jobs, the more capital, the more royalties, the more regional development and the better off our state will be, thanks to the resources sector.

We are also seeing growth in some more traditional areas. We are seeing some of the places where mines have been forecast to close actually staying open longer than predicted, stretching out employment further than expected and stretching out investment further than expected. While we often think of the key exploration and the key production companies, those actually running the mines, one of the greatest opportunities for South Australia at the moment is in the METS sector—the services industry that supports our resources companies.

We have an extraordinary opportunity in South Australia—in fact, world-renowned in many ways. This may not be known to members in this chamber, but this is also a very important export opportunity for us. We think of the resources sector as exporting the materials—ore (or processed) that comes out of the ground—but exporting our skills, our talent, our technology and equipment in the METS sector is another fantastic export opportunity for our state.