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Is Western Australia’s heritage compliance boom suddenly over?
To Boom or not to boom, that is the question.
Australia’s Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson declared on 23 August 2012 that the country’s mining boom was over. This was one day after the world’s biggest miner BHP Billiton shelved two expansion plans – the Olypmic Dam open cut mine expansion in South Australia and the Port Hedland outer harbour expansion in Western Australia’s Pilbara region – each project valued at around $320 billion.
Archaeological salvage excavation at an iron mine site in the Pilbara (Photo: Guadalupe Cincunegui, ACHM).
These statements prompted some immediate flak from the mining and resources sector, while the Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett repeated his mantra that there never was a “boom”, it was just that his State has a healthy, expanding economy!Minister Ferguson and other senior Labor Government figures rapidly clarified his statement, saying that he was referring to the commodities boom being over, particularly with the international iron ore and coal prices dropping, while tens of billions of dollars in ongoing mining and energy development projects in Australia would continue on track.This is the point at which Australian heritage consultants could stop holding their breath and quaking every time they looked at a media financial report for more news of impending doom.
Heritage consulting in Australia is predominantly tied up with mining and energy developments and regional infrastructure development projects – which in turn are responses to growth through mining and energy developments. Minister Ferguson’s original announcement, coupled with BHP Billiton’s announcement and the resulting media blitz caused considerable angst among consulting firms still taking on new staff to push for bigger shares of mining-related heritage survey and impact-mitigation work – and for the growing numbers of local archaeology and anthropology graduates, as well as international ones on holiday-working visas, who are looking for work in the industry.
There has been some drop in available project work – cancellation of the BHP Billiton projects and some slowdowns in other companies’ projects due to credit and cost recalculations in the face of lower commodity prices. This has hit Queensland’s coal industry, though coal-seam gas projects so far seem unaffected. Overall though, everyone still seems to be maintaining their work flow on current projects. However, heritage services for development projects represent a finite block of work, and to maintain momentum, heritage consultancies need a constant flow of new projects. So while there appears to be enough work at the moment, we will still be all watching China in particular and the financial news in general, to see if the past continues to have a commercial future in Australia.
Australia’s “export resources” boom leads the economy and supports heritage consulting
Perth Airport’s plan for the $500 million upgrade that will integrate international and domestic terminals and provide for the rapidly expanding FIFO requirements of the Pilbara mining industry (photo credit Australian Business Traveller)
The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia (CME) described the Australian domestic outlook as “cautiously optimistic”in its quarterly WA Resources and Economics Report (with KPMG) in March 2012. The export resources sector, which is providing a sustained boom for the heritage consulting segment, still leads the national economy.
Western Australia continues to benefit from the surging resources sector. The March 2012 ABS Investment Survey shows that resource investment has grown to be larger than investment in all other Australian business sectors combined. According to the survey, 86 per cent of this investment goes to Western Australia and Queensland, and there could be a further 62 per cent increase in total resource sector investment in 2012/13.
The report also noted that the high level of investment is maintaining record levels of employment in Western Australia, with February 2012 unemployment for the State at four percent, and forecast to remain this low for the next few years.
The Western Australian resources industry supports heritage industry employment (archaeologists, anthropologists, GIS specialists, etc) not just in Western Australia, but throughout the country. Most of the mining and energy project development is in remote areas such as the Pilbara and mid-north regions, so that heritage consultants join the flood of fly in-fly out (FIFO) workers for these projects from around the country. Most heritage consulting firms engaged in heritage survey and management work in this sector source both permanent and casual staff from around the country, who fly in via Perth to regional airports around the country, sometimes followed by hours of four-wheel-drive travel to reach the work sites. Read more…
Heritage consulting thrives in Australia’s “two-speed economy”
Australia’s “two-speed economy” features a dynamic mining and energy sector, contrasted to flagging retail and manufacturing business. Heritage consulting firms in Australia continue to flourish through providing heritage management services for mining and energy developments throughout the country.
The plant at the Brockman 4 mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
According to current Australian Government budget projections, “following growth of 34% in resources investment in 2010‑11, resources companies expect to increase their capital expenditure by a further 74% in 2011‑12, supporting a strong outlook for commodity exports and activity in the related construction and services sectors.” The growth of resources sector investment in Australia for the 2011 calendar year is reported at $450 billion.
Western Australia has the highest value and fastest growth, particularly in iron ore, petroleum and natural gas. The value of Western Australia’s mineral and petroleum industry reached a record high of $101.2 billion in 2010–11 representing an increase of 39 per cent over the previous year. This amounted to nearly 57% of Australia’s total output of minerals and energy, as a major provider of these commodities on the world stage. However, minerals and energy products constituted 95% of Western Australia’s Merchandise Exports in 2010-11, illustrating the dominance of this sector of the economy. The fastest growth continues to be in the Pilbara region in the north-west of Western Australia, featuring hundreds of billions of dollars of iron ore and natural gas resource projects. Read more…
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