The University of Western Australia’s Energy and Minerals Institute’s State of Mind publication is a compelling call to action for the state to leverage the human capital that has underwritten its minerals and energy expansion, and create a more knowledgeable and prosperous Western Australia, Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett said.
The State of Mind narrative and digital undertaking, produced by Perth-based public knowledge agency Knowledge Society, presents a visual, three-dimensional view of the state’s minerals and energy sector story using data journalism, which revises the narrative of Western Australia.
Speaking at the launch of the project at the In the Zone 2015 event at information and technology giant Google’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore, in April, Barnett said that the report shows Western Australia’s connections into global supply chains, capital raising networks and how Perth is emerging as the soft-power capital of the Indo-Pacific.
“It puts Western Australia's achievement as the world's number one diversified minerals and energy province in a global context. It tells the story of our success being underwritten by technological leadership, including in eight of the McKinsey Global Institute breakthrough technology areas of the twenty-first century,” Barnett said.
Also speaking at the launch was Knowledge Society CEO Elena Douglas, who said: “We stand on the shoulders of a technical achievement that we have not properly understood or appreciated. Yet it is this capacity that – along with a new state of mind – offers Western Australia far-reaching opportunities.”
State of Mind, which was re-released in May this year at the In the Zone event, in Perth, highlights that Western Australia is the world’s top diversified minerals and energy province. Further, six of the top seven international energy companies base their regional head offices in Perth.
The report also found that of the Western Australia-listed companies on the ASX 150 active in Africa, 118 are in Asia, 82 in South America, 66 in North America and 46 in Europe.
State of Mind points out that 66% of global mining software is produced in Perth. A recent report by Australian economics advisory practice Deloitte Access Economics, which was commissioned by Google, estimates that the Australian digital economy is worth $79-billion, comprising 5.1% of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP), and could be worth $139-billion as soon as 2020, making up 7.3% of the nation’s GDP.
Business and economics research institute McKinsey Global Institute has identified the 12 technologies that will matter between now and 2025 and Western Australia is engaged in ground-breaking research and innovation at the forefront of eight of these disruptive tech-nologies, including automation of knowledge work, advanced robotics, autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles, the Internet of things; energy storage, advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery, advanced materials, and renewable energy.
Perth is unique in Australia for the density of its engineering talent and has the fourth larg-est number of engineers in the world, with 22.3 engineers for every 1 000 people employed in a city with a population of over one- million.