Friends, it's a tribute to your industry's importance to this country that Minerals Week has become an institution on our political calendar, now into its fourth decade.
Mining is our economy's “strong right arm”.
When Australians see those great images of the industry, big yellow trucks the size of apartment blocks and open cuts as deep as Sydney Harbour and trains as long as the Story Bridge, we all feel a real pride in the vast continent we share and the endeavour we've made to develop it.
When almost six million Australians travelled overseas last year - nearly tripled from seven years ago - every one of them had a purchasing power based on the strong dollar mining has built.
And mining is woven through our culture and history as well.
The first “diggers” were miners - it was miners who raised the first truly Australian flag and who beneath it swore to stand by each other and their rights.
And it's my view that the modern story of mining is also one from which all Australians have much to learn - because the mining industry is now one of the finest examples of what I think of as the Australian “endowment”.
This country derives a historic advantage from our national talents and our natural gifts.
The gifts inherent in our natural resources, environment and location.
The talents embodied in the skills and knowledge of our people.
Now, no question, one of those talents is self-deprecation.
Outside the sporting arena, when we do undeniably achieve, we too often put it down to luck.
But it's not luck that makes this a top-ten country on low trade barriers, openness to international ideas, sophisticated and independent economic institutions, a list that goes on.
Luck didn't give us the three triple-A ratings which only seven other economies can claim - which no previous Australian government can claim either.
Luck didn't make us a top-two country on the measures that are most important to us: political stability, social mobility, ease of starting a business.
Luck didn't keep us out of the worst global recession in eighty years.
Any more than luck built a mining industry that supports the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Australians, that develops and exports advanced mining services and leads the world in production of so many commodities.
No, it took hard work, good ideas, tough business leadership, a skilled and creative workforce, generations of private endeavour.
And Governments playing their part.
You had to fight for it, we had to fight for it, and that suits us, because Australians know that things worth having are worth fighting for as well.
Many places on earth are resource-rich.
Few nations turn natural resources into national wealth as well as Australia does.
In reality, so many countries manage their mineral wealth badly that in the developing world they call it “the resource curse” and in the advanced world they call it “the Dutch disease”.
Australia's success in managing our resources has been built on much more than chance.
This is one of the keys to understanding your industry's success - and it is one of the keys to understanding our future success as a nation.
You see, our national endowment is not just the value of our natural gifts or the value of our national talents.
It's the way we use those talents to make something out of those gifts.
The way we take our skills and knowledge, and use them to transform our natural resources, environment, location: the way we turn these things to our purposes.
This endowment was not just given to us - it was made.
We made our location an advantage when we all worked hard to open this nation to Asia.
We made our environment an advantage when we all worked hard to protect it and to show it to the world.
Just as our natural resources only become an advantage because you make the most of mining.
Because of the work you do, and the work your people do, to extract its value, to find markets for it.
Making mining succeed is the work you do every day - and in modern Australia, it's a big part of the work of Government too.
And mining will benefit from much that this Government does in coming years, what we do for growth in the world - and for growth at home.
And yes, what we do to deliver a share of the benefits of growth to all.
When I recently said “I fight for Australia” I meant it.
In a tough global environment, Australia needs tough leadership, and I think you know by now, I'm prepared to fight.
Right now, there are important challenges to global growth.
At the centre of these challenges is the struggle of many European economies to deal with their sovereign debt crisis and restore growth on their whole continent.
The political developments that flow from this struggle have captured public attention in recent weeks, but in truth they have only dramatized the real economic debates which we have been engaged in through this year and last.
In Chicago last week, while of course the principal business was security, I did take the opportunity to express to my counterparts Australia's support for the G8's renewed resolve to promote European growth alongside fiscal sustainability.
And the European leaders weren't surprised at the view I expressed or that I flagged Australia will keep up the fight for strong and effective pro-growth policies at the G20 next month.
It's an argument we've pressed for some time now, and in doing so we have pointed to our own example and achievements.
Australia is a case study of policies to hold growth up in the face of a downturn, combined with charting - and following - a disciplined path of fiscal repair.
Growth and consolidation.
Of course, Europe is in a fundamentally different position from Australia, facing deeply entrenched problems with no easy fixes.
While Australia also has the advantage that we are in the right region at the right time, entering an Asian Century.
Asia's transforming growth won't end in a year or five years - it's an historic change with historic consequences and it's driving a long term shift in demand for what you produce.
But ultimately what's best for our peoples' jobs is balanced global growth and what's best for our firms' prosperity is balanced global demand and your industry is no exception to that.
So we'll keep up the fight for growth in the global economy.
And we'll continue that fight at home as well.
I'm very proud of the surplus Budget the Treasurer brought down this month.
In a very tough world environment, there's no clearer symbol of Australian strength.
And the surplus is right for the domestic economy as well.
The fiscal consolidation we've delivered has been designed to maintain sustainable, low-inflation growth, and you can see the effects already.
And you can also see that the extraordinary investment pipeline in this country keeps growing and now sits at over $500 billion.
So it's vital Government create room for the private sector and that's exactly what we've done.
Of course, it's not easy. I look out at the room and there's a few veteran industry cost-cutters here who know that.
People who know what it's like to look at the revenue forecasts going down, quarter after quarter, who know what it's like to open up the lid on a few big cost-centres and to make the tough changes to get costs coming down.
That was the kind of picture we faced in framing this Budget:
Our predecessors saw revenues increased by almost two percentage points of GDP during their term.
In five Labor Budgets revenues have fallen by more than one and a half percentage points of GDP.
So what's our response been? We've cut spending.
Down to 23.5 per cent of GDP next financial year and staying below 24 per cent over the forward estimates.
The longest sustained period at these levels since the early 1980s.
We don't cut spending, or shrink the real size of Government, in a lunchtime libertarian seminar.
We do it in long days of expenditure review.
And because we make difficult decisions and pursue tough savings, we are able to keep room for important investments in the long-term drivers of productivity.
In infrastructure.
Projects vital to your industry, like the long-deferred Maldon to Dumbarton freight line linking resource fields in New South Wales to Port Kembla.
And new economic infrastructure, delivered through the Regional Infrastructure Fund, drawing on the proceeds of the MRRT, like the hundreds of millions we've contributed to the major upgrade of the roads around Perth Airport.
In skills.
The Budget funded our new “HECS for Skills” scheme.
Part of our almost doubling of the level of skills funding we inherited in 2007.
So while for projects where there's a real need for some temporary overseas workers we will support that, our first priority is to secure jobs and training for Australian workers.
So our surplus Budget is a Budget for growth - it's the right Budget for the times.
I know many of you have serious differences of opinion with us on some of the elements of our policy approach.
You've told us that straight, and we expect nothing less, straight talking is the Australian way.
But I think we also both know that there there's a whole productivity agenda that we do share and where we can make a huge difference: in skills, innovation, infrastructure, business regulation, trade.
And you know that when industry and government work together on the world stage we get results together too.
Australian officials overseas, my ministers too, spend plenty of time working in the interests of our mining industry.
It's the same in my own meetings with visiting heads of Government, in my own work overseas.
Many of you know from your own experience that when it's in the industry's interest, the country's interest, for something to get said at the highest level, it gets said.
These are the opportunities for progress we share.
So we've got a plan to keep up the fight for growth, in the world and at home.
And yes, we've got a plan to spread the benefits too.
We are going to cut taxes, lift pensions and lift family payments.
Now, I know you're not all in love with the language of “spreading the benefits of the boom”.
I know everyone here works hard, competes in a tough global environment; you take big risks and you earn the big rewards.
You build something.
Australians don't begrudge hard work and we admire your success.
But I know this too: they work pretty hard in car factories and at panel beaters' and in police stations and hospitals too.
And here's the rub.
You don't own the minerals. I don't own the minerals.
Governments only sell you the right to mine the resource.
A resource we hold in trust for a sovereign people.
They own it and they deserve their share.
I think we've been crystal clear since the Budget.
We want growth and then we want the benefits of growth to spread to all.
There's been a fair bit of talk recently about whether Labor wants to make the pie bigger or slice the pie up differently.
Well, here's the answer. Since we came to office:
Euro area: economy shrank, one point six per cent.
Japan: economy shrank, one point seven per cent.
United States: economy grew, one point three per cent.
Australia: economy grew, eight point eight per cent.
At the end of it all, the short-term arguments come and go - the facts endure.
Our economy is the envy of the world.
Our mining industry is the envy of the world.
There's nowhere in the world you'd be better off investing.
And there's nowhere in the world where mining has a stronger future.
And this is Australia, and it has a Labor Government.