Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The New South Wales Minerals Council on Monday rubbished a report published by The Australian Institute (TAI) in June, which claimed that state governments had invested about A$17.6-billion to assist the resources sector over the past six years.
In the report, which drew widespread criticism from mining industry bodies at the time, TAI claimed that the assistance had taken many forms, from assistance packages to discounted access to services or infrastructure.
However, the New South Wales Minerals Council said that independent analysis of the report, compiled by Castalia Strategic Advisors MD and former state Treasury Secretary Michael Schur, had revealed that TAI “grossly exaggerated” the level of subsidy to the mining and resource sector. The group’s analysis of state and territory budgets was also “fundamentally flawed”, with actual government subsidies “amounting to no more than a few percentage points of the A$17.6-billion claimed by the institute”.
“TAI has been clearly caught attempting a massive economic fraud to attack the mining industry. This should confirm once and for all that the Australia Institute is an antimining campaign organisation masquerading as a think-tank,” New South Wales Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee said.
“The revelation of this A$17-billion fraud means that the economic credibility of TAI is now in tatters.”
At the time of its release in June, the report was also slammed by the Western Australian Chamber of Minerals and Energy, which said that the report ignored facts, and rather pursued an anti-resource headline, while the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies labelled the report as an attack on the mining industry.