|
|
A powerful new lobby group called Straterra that was launched at the Aus-IMM conference with the aim of getting a dedicated senior minister in Cabinet and doubling the resource sector’s current annual $4 billion contribution to the country’s economy, including $2 billion in exports.
Formed to unify the advocacy of the mining, minerals, petroleum, aggregates and coal industries, it brings together the Minerals Industry Association, the Aggregates and Quarrying Association, the Coal Association and Minerals West Coast under the umbrella of a Wellington-based organisation whose chief executive is Dr Ian Parton. Parton said at the launch that Straterra believes the resource sector’s contribution to the economy can be doubled in the medium term, providing the investment and regulatory regime is competitive with other similar countries, and that the industry continues to set standards that earn it a social licence to operate. “Straterra will work for greater recognition of the importance of the sector, and form partnerships with local and national agencies to resolve issues which constrain investment and development in this sector,” he says. The group is chaired by John Dow, who is also chairman of the Pike River Coal Company, the stock exchange’s best-performed company this year. He told Q&M magazine that the country is one of the most resource-rich countries in the OECD, but has done little to exploit its resource potential over the past 25 years. He said he hoped to see the establishment of a senior ministerial Cabinet portfolio to counter the fragmentation of government resource agencies through restructuring over the past two decades. Conservation and sustainability issues threatened to lock up mineral resources forever, while nimby (not in my backyard) attitudes in local government had made the supply of aggregates, vital to infrastructural development, more difficult and expensive than they needed to be. “Some regional and district councils have tried to exclude mining and quarrying from their district plans, with the result that quarries are being forced further and further away from the main centres. “With the cost of aggregates typically doubling for every extra 30kms they have to be carted from quarry to worksite, infrastructural costs are being hugely and unnecessarily inflated,” Dow says. Straterra’s “Prosperity through partnership” vision was to be the natural partner of choice in all issues relating to the future of the minerals industry.” Q&M Vol.5 No.4 October-November 2008 All articles on this website are copyright to Contrafed Publishing Co. Ltd. |