Speaking at an economic outlook briefing held in Perth, BIS Shrapnel chief economist Dr Frank Gelber said the current prosperity on the back of the upsurge in minerals investment would last for some time.

“The thing is though I don’t know when it ends,” he said.

“It could go for twenty years or it could go for five. I do know that it runs for at least five because we have now locked in a round of projects which underpins growth for the next five years.”

According to BIS Shrapnel figures, investment in the mining sector surged fourfold over the decade to 2012, with investment in the sector now accounting for around 30% of total business investment up from around 13% a decade earlier.

Since 2006, the sector has accounted for all the growth in Australia’s business investment.

Looking ahead, BIS believes minerals investment will continue for the next five years and expects it to increase by 77.8% in the 2012 financial year and 62.8% the following year.

According to the BIS, half of total investment in Australia will come from the resources sector by June of next year.

However, during his speech, Gelber warned that governments along with the private sector were focused on investing in the short term and were not looking ahead to investing long-term when the boom ended.

“Shouldn’t we be putting aside money to prepare for the mining investment boom to end?” he said.

‘We have seen booms and busts before and this is a whopper. We always get carried away, that this boom is going to go forever … but common sense tells us that we should be cautious about preparing for the time when it is not going ahead.

“If you look at the way the government has done this, besides the fact that they are totally distracted on politics, they are going [with] the flow.

“They are going after the money, they are going after the minerals boom.

“We are running after the money, burning our bridges because all of the industries we lose are the ones we are going to need when we haven’t got minerals investment to go to.

“All those people employed in minerals investment have to be employed somewhere else once the investment boom is over and investment actually falls sharply.

“When that happens we will have a big recession, here especially, as we cut back on investment that is the primary driver of growth."