Well thank you very much Chris Renwick, Barry Haase the Federal Member for Kalgoorlie, Dr David Smith, ladies and gentlemen.
It's great to be in Karratha to be reminded yet again by an on site inspection of the enormous and growing contribution of the mining industry and the resource sector to the wealth and the strength and the growth and the development of Australia.
The story of this part of Australia, the story of the north west and the story of the growth and expansion of the mining industry and the way in which it has really over the last 30 to 40 years greatly strengthened and diversified the Australian economy is one of the greatest parts of the Australian economic story since World War II. And in the brief time I've been here this morning, I've had an opportunity in talking to people to be reminded of what all of that means to them, to taste and feel the sense of optimism that people have and you have every reason to be optimistic. Because in this part of Australia you have a product and you have a capacity to extract and deliver on time in an economic and efficient way a product that is greatly in demand. I've seen firsthand the interest of countries, particularly but not only in Asia in our resources, the iron ore exports, we really can't export enough to countries like China recently further a-field that by and large natural gas contract to China.
I was recently in California talking to the Governator as they call Arnold Schwarzenegger over there and the Governator and his friends are potentially interested in buying LNG from Australia because the United States is going to place a very significant resource and energy challenge in the immediate years ahead. And all of this adds up to the fact that if we play our cards right to use the colloquialism, this country has enormous growing and great opportunities in the resource sector. The key to it, of course, they have good company, they have a well paid highly skilled workforce. And I want to pay tribute to Rio Tinto for the contribution it's made as one of the great mining companies of the world and the contribution in various guises and Rio Tinto and CRA and the people that have led it over the last 30 years I know extremely well.
And I must say that I applaud the advances that have been made in the industrial relations in the mining industry. It's resulted in an expanded output. But just as important, in fact more importantly, it's resulted in higher wages and greater employment opportunities. And isn't that the golden double in any industry to be selling more, to be getting new customers, but to have a highly skilled and as well an increasingly well paid workforce. And that in a sense is what good industrial relations and good economic policy is all about. And this industry is a wonderful example of how you can achieve both of those things. You can achieve a win win outcome for both the company and also for the employees and it fills me with a great deal of enthusiasm and it reinforces my passionate belief in the economic future of this country and my passionate belief that this country if it does sensible things and builds on its natural advantage and one of the great natural advantages that this country has is that we are well endowed by providence with great natural resources and we shouldn't be the least bit reluctant to use those to our national advantage, but use them in a way that is environmentally sensible, recognise the retrospective rights and interest of indigenous people in many of the resource sectors of Australia and also understand that it's a joint effort. It's not just the billions of dollars that companies invest, but it's also the rights and interests and legitimate aspirations of workers. And they've got to be well paid and properly remunerated for their efforts.
We do face in Australia a serious shortage of skilled tradesmen and women. And I had the opportunity of meeting some of the apprentices and trainee apprentices here this morning and I can only say to them that they have opportunities ahead of them because of those shortages but perhaps their peers in an earlier generation may not have had. But we as a nation face an increasing challenge in this area.
But overall, it's a source of tremendous hope and optimism to me and whenever I go to Asia in particular and talk to Korean and Japanese and Chinese leaders they talk with great affection about our product and they talk about the fact that we delivered on time, that we are reliable, we are a stable source of supply and if we continue that way then there's no reason why we shouldn't continue to have growing opportunities.
There are just two small announcements that I'd like to make. When I was in Perth on the 11th of June I announced the national skills shortages mining initiative which is being led by the Minerals Council of Australia in conjunction with the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia. And that initiative was to identity current and future skills needs for the mining industry and to develop an industry led approach to promoting careers in mining and to devising and implementing strategies to attract young and mature aged workers into the industry. And I'm delighted to announce that Dr David Smith who's with us today who's the managing director of Pilbara iron ore Rio Tinto group has agreed to be chairman of that working group. And other members drawn from the wide cross sections the mining industry, stakeholders and government representatives are being finalised. Dr Smith brings a wide ranging experience as many of you know in the mining industry to the working group and he's a passionate advocate of learning and skills development and that is precisely what's needed.
Now my colleague and your Federal Member Barry Haase who badgers me frequently about issues that are important to his electorate, and I think you all know, Barry represents, geographically speaking, the largest electorate anywhere in the world. It's not only the largest electorate Australia but of course it's the largest electorate anywhere in the world and it's made up of many very different communities, each of which play a very important part in both the political and economic history of Australia. It's well known of each that if Kalgoorlie hadn't have voted in a particular direction in the referendum at the time of federation then Western Australia probably wouldn't have joined the Commonwealth at that particular time and it was said that because a large number of expatriate Victorians were working on the goldfields at Kalgoorlie that the city of Kalgoorlie, unlike many other parts of Western Australia, voted for federation.
Anyway, Barry's been on my back about a lot of things to do with Kalgoorlie and today in response from that to his advocacy in particular I want to announce a commitment of half a million dollars to establish a Commonwealth Government mining careers bursary scheme and under this scheme we will provide bursaries to years 10, 11 and 12 high school students in Western Australia to study mathematics and science subjects as preparation for undertaking an undergraduate engineering degree, provide direct exposure to the mining industry for selected students through two fully funded four day excursions to Kalgoorlie, including mine visits, it will increase the awareness of the mining industry amongst high school students in general through ambassadorial activities of bursary holders within their school communities, and provide direct financial incentives for students to undertake the first year of a mining related undergraduate degree in Kalgoorlie at the Western Australian School of Mining, Curtin University of Technology. And I'll be releasing a more expansive statement on that issue today.
But they're just two very important, small in a national perspective, but in a local perspective very, very important because the thing that I am constantly reminded of about this fantastic country of ours is that when you go around it although we all have a lot in common, we interact with each other in a very direct and open fashion and there's a fundamental common decency and courtesy about all Australians no matter where I find them, even those that violently disagree with me, and I find plenty of them who violently disagree with me about all manner of subjects, such as what a great democracy is all about. But having said that, it is a wonderful sum of many different parts, Australia, and you really do have to understand that people who live and work and bring up families and live out their lives in this part of Australia, they have a different experience, they have different needs and they have different interests and people for example who might grow up in the leafy suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne or indeed grow up in Western Victoria or grow up in green and very, very damp and wet and lush Tasmania, so it's a very, very different environment and it's a good reminder to me by coming to these different parts and can I just say again to all of you, to the Rio Tinto family, which has made such a fantastic contribution, not only to the mining industry but to Australia over 30 or 40 years and have been such a mainstay of this wonderful, extraordinary chapter of Australia's post-World War II economic development, thank you for what you have done, I wish the company well, I wish all who work with it well, I wish a continuation of that sharing of the (inaudible), I believe in companies making profits, I want them to pay their taxes, and I'm sure Rio Tinto does that, as all good corporate citizens do, and we always want people who work for companies to be very well paid because at the end of the day it's a joint effort, it's not just the shareholders, it's also the employees and I think the mining industry is a very good example of how that can be achieved and thank you and good luck to you all.
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