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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-02-23 Daily Xml
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Copper Mining Strategy

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy) (14:11): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: This afternoon, the state government launched its long-term strategy to produce and export more than $8 billion of copper a year and entrench South Australia as one of the world's most important and significant suppliers of copper. Copper is critical to lifting the living standards of countries in our region and combating the effects of climate change through the spread of renewable energy.

South Australia holds 68 per cent of Australia's copper resources within our copper belt, which is home to Olympic Dam and Prominent Hill. We also produce copper from Kanmantoo in the Adelaide Hills, and progress is being made towards developing the world-class copper discovery at Carrapateena. Our copper strategy sets out a clear pathway to support the industry to triple its copper production to one million tonnes per year within the next two decades. By trebling our copper production, South Australia has the potential to create up to 10,000 extra jobs, increasing the workforce involved in the sector to 15,000 people.

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: This strategy emerged from a copper summit I hosted in May last year. At that time, I set out the challenge of tripling production and asking industry and other stakeholders what measures we needed to take to achieve this objective. Currently, this state produces and exports $1.9 billion of copper and, last year, the copper industry employed about 5,000 people in exploration and production.

We can build on this strong foundation. To do so, we need to encourage new discoveries and harness innovations to ensure we have more efficient and productive copper producers, and we must improve community engagement to ensure that South Australians continue to support our world-class resources industry. The government has already taken several early steps to implement the strategy, including providing $20 million for PACE Copper and $10 million to support innovative research into the process of improving copper-in-concentrate.

Last week, the Premier opened the new $32 million Drill Core Reference Library at Tonsley, which will be a world-leading research and discovery facility. The state government will also continue to work to identify infrastructure needs and develop innovative approaches, including finding suitable water supplies and transport opportunities to support existing and future mines. The government aims to attract major international resource and service companies with deep mining expertise and technology.

Through the copper strategy, we will support international information exchange programs with Chile and China, which are world leaders in copper production. As part of the consultation process, three action themes were identified which aim to bring forward exploration and discovery of new copper reserves, improve productivity and efficiencies of local copper producers and improve the industry's capacity to engage with the South Australian community. It is an ambitious target, but South Australians, when we work together, can achieve great things.

The SPEAKER: I warn the member for Hartley for the second and final time for interjecting during that ministerial statement.

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