The boom also had dire outcomes for smaller communities. The mining companies lured tradesmen from all fields with extraordinarily high pay packages. This measure forced firms outside the mines to inflate wages in an attempt to retain and, or, attract tradesmen to keep the business viable.

Many small businesses have folded being unable to either pay the inflated wages or attract enough tradesmen to keep the business running.

It was a boom for some but a bust for many outside the mining sector.

The Australia Institute should look on Australia as one big household. If we have a big strong breadwinner, we have a chance of having a reasonable standard of living. If we don’t, then poverty is the outlook. Where did Kevin Rudd get the money to avert a recession, the mining boom. We are all shareholders through the tax system on companies of companies. If miners go well we all go well.

This used to be recognized universally, and a Miners Right, giving a prospector almost unlimited access to Crown land, recognized their importance. The mining boom, by bringing dollars into circulation, made the economy liquid. There was cash around. It was spent. How it was spent was mostly up to you.

The stimulus package that has largely insulated Australia from the worst of the world recession, is funded in large part by our mining sector, and the blue ribbon credit rating it gives us. We cannot eat rocks, or trees, or grass. We as a higher form of life, must eat expensive farmed food. We can and do eat fish, but it has to be caught, by a primary producer.

Of course we all benefited from the mining boom. These miners have made it possible to ride out a bitter recession, and whingeing about foreign ownership is not the right thing to do. The bottom line is yes, we did all benefit, but not equally. That is the challenge we must now face

During the "mining boom" we had private debt blow out to 30 times historical whilst off-shoring industry, privatising infrastructure and converting 30% of GDP into financial (farcical) tiddlywinks.
I was looking forward to the benefits of my skills being in demand and perhaps my wages could have risen to compensate for the 300% increase in house prices. Nope: they increased immigration due to "skills shortage" and swamped the market. This kept house prices high and skilled wages low.
Seems the free market is only meant to benefit the few at the expense of the many...just like most Liberal policy. You can view Rudds cash splash as a belated attempt to re-invigorate the sectors sucked dry by the oligarch party..
Funds are scarce so interest rates (the rental price of money) should be high. Why aren't they? Market distortion. If the market were to price money correctly we would have massive foreclosures, bank failures and house land price decline like has happened in US and UK. So will they allow this when the fools in charge believe "house inflation Good, all other inflation Bad"...or will they let inflation run out? We can't have both at once now the bubble has burst.
High inflation will penalise savers, workers and pensioners whilst continuing to benefit bankers, property developers and large asset holders.
Guess what: High inflation coming, the price of realistic interest rates may be too much for incumbents.
Australia could be rich, free and sustainable. Instead we've followed America into being broke, stratified and over-exploited. The Greens need some economic/industry clout to pose a significant threat to the Banker-fantasy league currently in both parties.

Like the author I also wondered where the benefits of the mining boom went. Although there were undoubted benefits in a lot of jobs created in one sector at higher pay - I disagree on that point - the adverse effects he is talking about amount to the classic resources curse. A country with resources does not seem to do mush more than dig them up and export them. Because its the easy thing to do that activity, one way or another - high exchange rate, consuming available capital - crowds out other activities. Finland is a classic case of the opposite. No resources, meant it had to find other ways to make a living and have done it so successfully that the Finns have one the highest standard of living per capita.
I'm not sure what can be done about this but Australia is lucky in that it has avoided the worst of the resources curse - civil war. Zaire is rich in diamonds but diamonds are small and portable and so ideal for financing wars, if a warlord or two holds a diamond producing area. There are diamonds in Australia, in small quantitites but, thankfully, no war lords.

Those sensible enough to know the boom would not last have gained greatly from the Mining boom. Those with no self control and addicted to debt were the big losers. Many unskilled workers were able to get well paid jobs where before they were close to unemployable. The mining boom has also seen many skilled workers from overseas settle in Australia. This is healthy immigration where the workers have integrated and added to our society unlike many who move to ghettos and milk the Government and live on the proceeds of crime. Mr Rudd has managed to give away 10 years or so of royalties in no time at all. Don't blame the Mining Industry for the wanton waste of State Labour and now Federal Governments.Despite the downturn we should be in a lot healthier position.

The mining boom like all industries is in recession. The demand for minerals has dropped, but still the mines are making a profit, and the share prices are creeping up again.

The boom contributed to the gov coffers, as did all other businesses. The boom was mostly due to two factors, one the increase in demand for minerals, and also the breaking of the strangle hold of labor IR laws that made mining unprofitable.

This is why other countries (south africa etc) had their booms long before 1990, but Aus had it only after the fall of the labor gov.

Seeing that it seems that my point of view is not regarded highly by the OLO managers, all I can say as a historian and a wheat cockie, that in WA we must look ahead much more than simply relying on quarry economics.

As one right now with fifteen great grandkids mostly interested in farming the almost total reliance in WA on pitstock politics for our future, worries me greatly.

Well, this piece does not say much for the Australia Institute

Could this wise researcher really be dumb enough to believe this rubbish, or is he dumb enough to believe that he can con the average Aussie into believing it. What ever the case he is an absolute dill.

WA, & QLD have been swimming in money, although bl@@dy idiots in those state governments have made sure it has just afforded an explosion in public servants, rather than do too much useful.

David has happily the tax cuts, paid for by mining income.

I won't waste my time further, anyone who could write that ca4p could never understand.

I did not realize that the Coal Expansion was over.
Australian Companies are doing well overseas & going by what results I get when I type “coal mines developing in Australia,” in google search, there is no end of Companies Expanding. Jobs may be lost in the Productive Mines with cut backs in Most, but searching each one I find Anglo Coal is confident of giving sustainable returns to their investors which does not sound like Coal is finished. Anglo Coal is part of the Bigger Company, Anglo America. With a quick job search there are positions in Australia for those who wish to apply to that company.

“Australian coal development company Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL) has started additional production-related drilling, as well as drilling to identify the site for the second decline shaft, on the farms neighbouring the company’s Mooiplaats coal project, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province.”
http://paguntaka.org/2009/03/13/australian-coal-mining-development-company-coal-expands-mooiplaats-coal-mine-project/

Rio Tinto has 5 operating mines in Queensland.“Xstrata Coal is the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal and the fifth largest producer of hard coking coal,” it claims on the Companies Web Site.

According to abc.net.au , “Waratah Coal says it will proceed with the development of Australia's biggest thermal coal mine in Queensland's central-west.
The group has entered into a memorandum of understanding with one of China's leading industrial companies to develop the project. It involves six coal mines at Alpha in the state's central-west, and thousands of jobs.

CSIRO is developing a mining method that can take the larger coal seams far superior to the present underground long wall methods. Hardly the sound of a dying industry.
http://www.csiro.au/solutions/ps14c.html

I won’t spoil all your fun, you can go to the internet and search for yourself. I have left the work force & am paid a Centerlink Age Pension and yes, I have benefited from the boom with all the moneys going into government coffers..

I'm pleased to read that the mining industry contributes little to the Australian economy. Since it's significantly larger in total than our incoming international tourism industry, clearly tourism doesn't do much for the economy either, so we can close down both industries and improve our economy at the same time!
What a load of bulldust! The Australia Institute has sought to compartmentalise the mining industry in such a way that it shows mining to be of less value than is bleedingly obvious to anyone who lives in WA or Queensland outside of Brisbane. Any pseudo-economist can distort the truth with selectively chosen numbers if they wish to...the old story: lies, damned lies and statistics. The truth is that mining is a critically important and valuable part of our national economy and, without it, the current recession would be having far more serious impacts on unemployment and government income.