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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-04-11 Daily Xml
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Resources Sector

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (14:28): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister update the house on the trade performance of South Australia's resources sector?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:28): On Tuesday, the Treasurer was speaking to the parliament about South Australia's growing economy and gained some highlights from the statistics recently released by the ABS. The data shows that recently South Australia's overseas exports have been consistently at or near record levels. In the 12 months leading up to February 2024, the state reached $17.9 billion in exported goods. That is a remarkable number.

Drilling down on that, the past 12 months have been a boon for copper. South Australian refined copper product has once again claimed the top spot for South Australian exports and goods to overseas markets, overtaking wheat. This contest between wheat and copper for the state's top spot is a very healthy rivalry, one that we should encourage. It should not be boiled down to one industry versus another. We want them both to succeed and both to continue breaking records.

It is disappointing that some people yelled out interjections or made remarks in the house like, 'You can't eat copper.' I don't think we should bring this type of debate towards what I think are two great entrepreneurial industries, the farming industry and the mining industry, that do it under very difficult conditions.

As I mentioned earlier, the last 12 months have been very big for copper. In fact, in the 12 months leading up to February, refined copper accounted for over 80 per cent of South Australia's manufactured goods value and South Australia exported to overseas markets over $2.5 billion in copper products and refined copper and over $1 billion in copper ore or concentrates.

As everyone has heard the Premier say repeatedly, copper is indispensable to electrification technologies which make it a critical mineral for global decarbonisation. Perhaps it is the most critical mineral of all. Wind turbines, electric vehicles, power cables, energy-efficient generators, motors, transformers, renewable energy systems: they all rely on copper. Forecasts predict a surge in global copper demand that will surpass supply capabilities and indeed will surpass known mine reserves.

What we are seeing is that this is good news for copper and it is exceptional news for South Australia. Why? Because we host nearly 70 per cent of Australia's copper reserves. Our global standing as a leading provider of the world's most critical mineral for decarbonisation is growing. Our proposed commercial-scale desalination plant, under our State Prosperity Project, stands to take South Australia to a whole new level and open up South Australia's potential to become a tier one copper province, which is an ambition that multiple governments have held in this state and one that we aim to realise.

We are seeing the scaling up of copper ore and concentrates being refined at BHP's Olympic Dam smelter and, once they start purchasing our water from Northern Water, I expect that processing will scale up much more sharply. We want to go up the value chain. We want to export value-added products. We are doing a lot of work to refine copper and green iron. It is the right direction for the South Australian economy, and I hope that agriculture and resources can coexist and continue to grow.

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