Canavan told the Melbourne Mining Club that Australian had already started its Brand Australia push, pointing to work Austrade has done at the macro and micro level.

At the macro level Austrade expects to see more mining services opportunities coming from increased global pressures on water management, corporate social responsibility, environmental management, and digital and automation solutions.

At a micro level Canavan said Austrade was continuing to expand the supply chain relationships with major foreign mining companies.

"This targeted initiative has generated more than $20 million of mining services sales into South America over the past few years," he said.

However, Canavan believes Australia can do more.

"We need to ensure that Australia has, and is seen to have, competitive business settings and regulator frameworks to maintain Australia's position as a leading investment destination," he said.

"One of the more useful suggestions from the [Resources 2030] taskforce is the proposal to establish regular benchmarking of policies that impact the resources sector.

"This will be a key discussion item at next week's Council of Australian Governments meeting.

"There are also new opportunities to expand exports of mining services not just mining commodities.

"Since the mining boom Australia's mining services companies are already exporting their expertise to overseas resources sectors.

The METS [mining, equipment, technology and services] sector contributes more than $90 billion to the Australian economy with current exports exceeding $27 billion.

"Its success as an exporter is highlighted by the fact that more than 66% of our mining services companies are exporters and those businesses range in size from less than $1 million to more than $100 million in annual sales."

Canavan said he wanted Australia's resource sector to be the best in the world.

"My vision for the resources sector is to have the world's most advanced, innovative and successful resources sector that delivers sustained prosperity and social development for all Australians.

"To meet this vision it is important we establish some axiomatic principles that guide everything we do."

Those are:

• Australia's resources wealth belongs to the Australian people and should be developed for their benefit;
• New policies and regulations should be based on robust science and account for the needs of the broader community, especially the communities where the resources sector operates;
• Foreign investment remains an important vehicle to develop Australia's resources; and
• Embracing technological change to remain competitive, responsive and continuously improve environmental outcomes.

Canavan said he had five policy goals of competitiveness, exploration and new developments, innovation, providing secure well paid jobs, and to support communities to ensure they receive the benefits from the development of Australian resources.

He said there would also be opportunities to develop further industries on the back of developments of new minerals industries such as lithium.

"Two companies have already committed to develop lithium hydroxide plants in Western Australia," Canavan said.

"Processing lithium ore - known as spodumene - to lithium hydroxide takes a product worth less than $1000 per tonne to one worth close to $20,000/t."

Canavan recently took part in the launch of a plan to go even further down the lithium processing part that aims to make Australia a lithium-ion battery manufacturing hub.