The great wealth of Western Australia

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 22

The great wealth of Western Australia

By

DAVID FINKELSTEIN and JOHN LONDON

in Sydney.

“Go West young man," a Melbourne journalist advised a recent visitor from America. Although most Australians inhabit the cities of the country’s Eastern seaboard, ah area whose climate is often compared with southern California, a growing number are moving to the West coast city of Perth. Situated along the banks of the Swan River and only a few miles from the Indian Ocean, the capital of Western Australia .. boasts a climate that “California only thinks it has.” Western Australia occupies an area equal to one-third of the United States and although it has a population of only one million (90 per cent of whom live in or around Perth), it is rapidly becoming the most economically productive state in Australia, if not one- of the richest regions of the world.

In addition to the mountains of iron ore discovered in the 1900 s in the Pilbara, Western Australia has recently realised that it is sitting on huge de-

posits of . bauxite, nickel, uranium, gold and diamonds (which may equal iron in export value), as well as off-shore oil and, on the North-West Shelf, what is potentially one of the world’s largest finds of natural gas.

Around Kalgoorlie, an outpost situated on the western' edge of the arid Nullarbor Plain, ghost towns from nine-teenth-century gold-rush days are once again becoming boom towns as increased gold prices have renewed interest in previously abandoned:mines. Stories of somebody who has struck it rich, either by finding a sizeable nugget or cashing in on a claim that has suddenly become profitable, are commonplace. Many real estate agents in Perth trade million-acre stations (plots of land hundreds of miles to the north where the inhospitable country comes complete with sheep, wild camels, and often "walkabout” groups of sadly inebriated and neglected Aborigines) for be-

tween nine and 6V cents an acre.

Despite the boom, not everyone. in Western Australia is becoming an overnight millionaire. “I came west because I was a failure back east,” said a former stockbroker from Sydney, who is now trying his hand at upgrading a resort hotel in a remote coastal town. “Out here I’m working harder than ever, but I’m not doing much better than before.”

Many Western Australians, dissatisfied with the Government’s resource development policy, are pressing for a resource tax on foreign mining interests. But the state Premier, Sir Charles Court, argues that since foreign mining interests have already brought more jobs and royalties to the state — plans for 10 new hotels valued at $BOO million have been approved in the past year — and more income tax to the Federal Government, any further tax would “kill the goose that lays the golden egg.” He said re-

cently: “Our policy in Western Australia is to fatten that goose to get more golden eggs."

The foreign mining companies are getting very fat indeed. Despite the inevitable problems with labour unions, a senior executive recently commented: “Our company made record profits from Australia last year, and it was so easy it was almost frightening.”

But the future could prove a little less easy. On February 25, for example, the Conservation Council of Western Australia. charging that Alcoa and Reynolds had taken advantage of “weak environmental laws and naive politicians,” brought an action in the District Court of Pennsylvania, against the two companies. The Council sought to restrain the* companies from further exploiting

the bauxite resources unless they could prove that it would not" upset the ecological system of the rare and endangered native jarrah forests, often compared to California's redwoods. Predictably, the politicians and the defendant corporations responded by attacking the council's patriotism for having taken the matter to an American court—Copyright, London Observer Service.