In its submission to the prime minister’s Infrastructure Taskforce, the MCA said only an overarching, nationally co-ordinated strategy involving all levels of government and all players in the export market could address capacity constraints that threaten to limit the nation’s minerals export potential.
High on the issues to be addressed are production and rail capacity restrictions, port congestion, excessive numbers of bulk carriers queuing in ports, limitations to forecasts
and projections of minerals supply and demand, conditionality of investment for independent infrastructure providers, and the indeterminate nature of competition policy causing investment uncertainty and delays.
Chief executive Mitchell Hooke said MCA’s 10 point strategy was based on three central planks - a whole-of-government approach marked by seamless co-operation between federal and state government agencies, an industry/government commitment to more effective co-operation in whole-of-chain integrated national export corridors, and the re-invigoration of the “Hilmer” competition policy reforms.
Under the plan, MCA said Auslink needed to focus on the bulk commodity logistics chains, improved public sector port infrastructure planning, and recognition that transport infrastructure costs should not be included in the calculation of royalties paid to state governments.
It also called for the reinvigoration of competition policy reform to reduce regulatory duplication, improve national consistency, increase certainty in investment decision made by significantly reducing delays in approvals or pricing determinations, and the transfer of responsibility for the application of competition policy to the ACCC.
It also said the $A1.26 billion paid by minerals companies in royalties annually should be used to finance infrastructure and retire debt, not used to finance current consumption.
“Achieving this 10 Point Plan is no simple task. It represents a different suite of economic reforms to the structural changes of the 1980s and ‘90s that have underpinned Australia’s exceptional economic growth and resilience to external shocks,” Hooke said.
“The reforms required today are more economically complex and contentious. They are just as politically sensitive, though this time from the perspective of state and federal relations.”
