It's an interesting point Taswegian makes re how much mineral resources Australia currently has.

ABARE puts brown coal at trend at about 500 years, iron ore is about 500-600 years and bauxite is 400 years. But that's just using current estimates. We have not surveyed for major new coal fields for sometime. If you're talking about natural gas, it's hard to quantify as the reserves are so large. I reckon its safer for the pink/green lobby re 'finites' to stick to fish stocks. They're on to something there.

As others have stated, we have considerable untapped resources no doubt about it.

The problem is economic, globally we now have too much debt and we are in a deflationary spiral that is growing by the day.

China's so called 'rise' in terms of their need for more minerals, particularly iron ore, is just about over.

Growth we have seen in China was the result of a direct 'political' decision, they have a new 5 year plan, and it does not demonstrate that they will need anywhere the same amount of iron ore, you can be the likes of Fortescue Metals will be gone by the end of 2013, they have the same problem as everyone else, too much debt, a dropping commodity price, a stalling market, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what comes next.

China will still be chasing other commodities, oil, coal, uranium, they are in the process of building 440 nuclear power stations.

Unfortunately our governments have not taken a long-term plan that takes these facts into account.

We can have all the mineral wealth on the planet but there is very little you can do if no one has the money or market for these goods.

Food for thought.

The problem for Australia and we Australians, is our current crop of visionless politicians?
Whose interests are served by locking away a resource potentially larger than all the known Middle Eastern hydrocarbon resources?
Ours or the foreign oil cartels, now reaping massive profits from captive markets. And in the process bringing down many dependant economies.
Without fuel we and almost everybody else is defenceless and in danger of starvation; given fuel is an absolute essential in both mass food production and transport!
Every human advance/liberation has been been made possible by cheap energy.
Some among us swallow the BS, that energy prices have to sky-rocket, to make alternatives possible.
This is in spite of the fact that something like oil rich algae grows like topsy, doubling its bodyweight every 24 hours, when conditions are right.
In our Northwest, a foreign company is currently exploiting algae, as a naturally occurring easily grown bio-diesel.
It needs no arable ground and can grow out in sea water!
They claim that they will soon be producing around a million litres per, for the local mining industry, plus fish and omega three?
Why, a fish farm, just the size of Eagle Farm's domestic runway, can produce as much profit as 10,000 acres of sustenance grazing!
Water is never likely to be a problem, given we are surrounded by seawater.
We can also grow things like our oil rich high protein native wisteria, which is salt, drought and frost tolerant/resistant! Utilising underground ag-pipes, wrapped in membrane, it is possible to irrigate these and myriad other crops, utilising seawater. The water pulling power of plants, replacing pumps, to create reverse osmosis!
Why, an acre of trees evaporates 3.5 times the amount of water, of an acre of open ponds!
Imagine that taking place under glass and the resultant evaporate collected as pristine drinking water, that can then be endlessly recycled for other purposes.
Good ideas which will likely gather dust, unless we can "earn" the money needed, to develop them and an endlessly sustainable future; plus survive and prosper?
Mine the reef!
Rhrosty.

OK Grim, so we've both read the article. But I still reckon you've drawn the wrong conclusion from it. The difficult thing about the inferred undiscovered resources is not the mining, but the exploration - and even expensive exploration is still only a small fraction of the total cost of mining. Wide extensions of many of Australia's most richly mineralised terranes are concealed by only quite shallow cover.

Even a fairly superficial examination of maps of Australia's mineral resources and geology tells you that the expectation of considerable further discovery is not unreasonable, indeed highly probable. The only conceivable obstacles to further discovery are political, not geological.

As Mark rightly points out, exploration costs are huge, and often return negative results.

The big problem we face now is the MRRT, as miners now face the prospect of not only risking the huge costs of exploration, but they now must part with a huge portion of their profits, should they strike the mother load.

The risks are the same, in fact higher, as costs have completely blown out, yet the rewards have been slashed. It simply makes no sense what so ever.

Now given that most mining ventures are joint ventures, with over seas interests, as a case of necessity, it is fair to assume these OS partners will look elsewhere, where the super profits don't increase the risks of this already highly risky industry.

Of cause if our government were to share the risk, as well as the gains, that would be a whole different ball game, but that makes too much sense.

The real scary part, is where we will be in another five years from now, if mining does stop, cause no doubt our government will still throw our taxes at non local issues.

Hopefully we would have thrown this lot out, but who knows.

G'day Herbert,
I think there are a number of good ideas in these posts, including your own. I would certainly support a transaction tax, although that's a little off topic.
I agree with Taswegian, that we should look at individual cases, rather than generalising.
Black coal for instance; according to the Uni of Newcastle, Peak Coal in Oz will occur sometime around 2050. NSW reserves will be exhausted by 2042.
The Pilbara iron ore reserves, the “largest in the world”, exhausted within 30 – 60 years.
Of greatest concern should be Peak Phosphorus (worldwide), estimated to occur within 30 years. No phosphorus, no food.
While these figures are certainly an argument for expanding exploration, we should take note of Geoff of Perth's arguments.
My argument is twofold. First, we need to husband our resources much more carefully, as Taswegian suggests. Second, we need to plug up the egregious hole in our 'bucket', particularly where phosphate is concerned.
We must stop pumping nutrients, and nutrient rich water out to sea.
And we need to move away from the Growth economy paradigm and start working towards a stable, or Steady State economy.