It is for good reason that South Australia has trumped Australia’s states and territories to take top spot in the 2013 RESOURCESTOCKS World Risk Survey – for the fourth consecutive year.

Deputy CEO of the Department for Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy Paul Heithersay – winner of this year’s

RESOURCESTOCKS Legends award – and others have helped build a formidable exploration and resources development jurisdiction over the past decade, which is coming into its own just as investors most need stability.

SA Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the state had shown the type of political leadership the resources industry needed: one that based its policies on science and facts, not scare campaigns, ideology and falsehoods.

“The problem is that it’s been too long in this country where mining has been politicised by one side or another,” Koutsantonis said.

“It is not right to say that ‘the Liberal Party is good for mining and the Labor Party is bad for mining’, or vice versa.

“What’s important is that mining is good for this country’s prosperity.

“The likes of Broken Hill built this nation. Mining got us through two world wars, helped sustain the country. Mining builds Western Australia and Queensland, it built Victoria and it will help build SA and Tasmania, also.

“So it’s important that as a community, we understand that while agriculture is important and manufacturing is vitally important, so is mining.”

While other states ripe with prospectivity struggle to balance the need to protect the environment yet also ensure swift and just approvals for exploration, Koutsantonis said the secret to SA’s regulatory success comes down to a key decision.

“You need to make a decision as a state, as a community and as a political leadership group that mining is good for your community,” he said.

“Once you make that decision based on science and facts and you remove emotion, you get good outcomes.”

With Victoria and New South Wales making decisions that increase sovereign risk for investors, SA is leading the way to develop an industry that will ensure that what is at stake here – nothing less than energy security and the future of the country – is allowed to thrive.

“What I will not allow in this state while we’re in government is an emotional debate by people who are running scare campaigns not based on science or facts but an ideology to stop mining. That has no place in this state,” Koutsantonis said.

“If there is evidence that coal seam fracturing affects aquifers, we’ll act. Thus far, no aquifer in Australia has ever been contaminated. If there is evidence that a brand new open cut mine will distribute dust that is harmful to communities, we won’t let it happen.

“But it needs to be based on evidence – not emotion, not Lock The Gate campaigns, not campaigns about the land user choosing one side over another, but about multiple land use principles; about what the best economic opportunities are for our state.

“I’m passionate about this, because our future prosperity lies in an industry that builds our nation. Mining and oil and gas exploration is good for our nation. Our energy independence is vitally important, and the best way to do that is to have healthy oil and gas and mining sectors.”

The state’s progress in the past decade has been nothing short of phenomenal. Koutsantonis said SA had grown from four mines to 21 in that time. Royalties had nearly quadrupled.

This, he said, was a state that was “really trying to take full advantage of its natural resources, but starting with the principle of doing no harm to the environment and working collaboratively with proponents and having the very best in multiple land use principles as our core”

“The one licence I can’t issue is a social licence, that’s something companies have to earn themselves,” he said.

“But we’ll stand side by side with companies and communities to ensure they’re given all the facts,” Koutsantonis said.

“The best form of consultation is complete transparency. The best disinfectant is sunshine. Let everyone see what is happening, what the proponents and opponents are saying, and let’s have a mature debate based on science.”

The evidence of this policy is there for all to see. Senex Energy chief executive Ian Davis was recently named the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Entrepreneur of the Year – and he chose SA to invest in.

The company, along with the likes of Santos and Beach Energy, is now at the forefront of unconventional oil and gas development in SA.

Koutsantonis sees the likes of Statoil, Chevron, BP and Northern Petroleum all flooding into SA looking for regulatory certainty as the state’s biggest tick of approval.

“A lot of ‘regulatory refugees’ are flooding into South Australia where there is a regulatory system that actually welcomes them, gives them certainty, de-risks their projects and partners with them rather than accusing them of all sorts of environmental vandalism as has been seen in Queensland and NSW,” he said.

“If I was an oil and gas company wanting to invest in Australia, I’d choose SA because we don’t politicise oil and gas, we don’t ban fraccing like they have in Victoria, or within certain distances of people’s homes like they do in NSW. We show political leadership by standing by companies that are prepared to take the risks.

“Those four consecutive surveys by RESOURCESTOCKS are a testament to our work in making sure that oil and gas and mining companies are protected and looked after in this state, which has always done its utmost to punch above its weight.

“This government and its department are of one mind in doing everything we can to de-risk and protect people investing in South Australia. In Victoria, the Napthine government has put a ban on coal seam fracturing – not based on science or world’s best practice, but fear and politics.

“In NSW, they’re facing a gas shortage in 2016-17 because that state government will not allow exploration of its own gas reserves.

“That sort of political leadership is not what this industry needs.”

With this groundwork firmly laid, the future looks bright for SA.

Koutsantonis noted that it holds nearly 80% of Australia’s known copper reserves, 40% of the world’s known uranium reserves and has the first shale gas well operating in the southern hemisphere.

Added to that, Chevron, Statoil, BP, Santos and Murphy Australia Oil are exploring the Great Australian Bight for what he hopes will be a new oil and gas region.

“Our future is Australian energy security,” he said.

“We’ve been providing trillions of cubic feet of gas to the eastern states and for export; I want to keep doing that.

“People said the Cooper Basin was in its last dying days, I think it’s in its youthful blushes.

“In terms of the Gawler Craton, Olympic Dam and the copper deposits around there, I foresee that within the next decade, exploration by Rio Tinto, OZ Minerals and BHP will get those deposits of uranium, copper, gold and silver out of the ground and into our export markets.

“I also foresee an energy revolution here in SA the likes of which the US is undergoing.”

While also welcoming the investment of major service providers, he also wants to create a service industry with good creative tension, with local firms growing and developing R&D, and partnering with universities to develop new technologies to drive costs down for explorers.

*A version of this report, first published in the December 2013 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by the South Australian government.