Western Australia faces a defining choice in 2026: compete or decline. To protect jobs, living standards and future industries, policymakers must urgently remove barriers to investment and restore the competitiveness that built our world-leading resources sector.
The biggest risk facing Western Australia is failing to meet 2026 with the urgency the times demand.
The opportunity before our resources sector is immense and growing. Around the world, powerful trends are reshaping the global economy: decarbonisation and electrification, onshoring and friend-shoring, rapid urbanisation and population growth, rising geopolitical tensions and a surge in global energy demand.
Each of these themes plays directly to WA’s strengths. Electrification requires copper, iron ore and lithium. Urbanisation requires iron ore and aluminium. Geopolitical uncertainty drives demand for the financial stability offered by gold. Rising energy demand – particularly in Asia – will require reliable natural gas for decades to come. Investment in defence and lower carbon technologies require our critical minerals and rare earths. We have these resources in abundance, and the expertise to develop them responsibly.
That is why we are closer to the beginning of our resources story than the end. For kids in school today, this means the opportunity for a career for life – work that is technologically advanced, highly paid, and helps improve the fortunes of our planet. Western Australia’s resources sector doesn’t just create jobs; it creates pathways that take people around the world.
The opportunity is enormous. Our hunger needs to match it.
Worryingly, there are signs our decades of success have dulled that hunger. While other countries are sharpening their appeal to global markets, our own competitiveness has begun to slip. Complacency has crept in. A belief that the sector that carries Australia will always be able to overcome impost after impost and layer upon layer of red and green tape.
Yet the foundations remain outstanding. Western Australia has world-class deposits, technical expertise and a track record of delivering projects responsibly and sustainably. The ingredients that made us one of the world’s leading resources jurisdictions remain in place. With the right choices, our competitiveness can quickly be restored.
The WA resources sector attracted $842 billion in global capital over the past two decades alone. One of the legacies of that investment is that today, just about any West Australian can leave high school and walk into a job paying six figures. This is not normal. In most countries, you need a Master’s Degree to earn that kind of money. In WA, you need a driver’s licence.
It is vital to understand that opportunity exists for only one reason: the world-leading industries built here in iron ore, LNG, gold, alumina and lithium.
And the benefits do not stop at mining itself. Our homegrown technology is powering innovation in other sectors and helping our economy diversify. Mining drives advances in automation, remote operations, data analytics, engineering, environmental management and logistics. These breakthroughs spill over into defence, space, agriculture, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and more. A strong resources sector is not the enemy of diversification – it is the enabler of it.
But we face challenges on the home front. Some activists have a single-minded objective to stop any and all development. In doing so, they put jobs, regional communities and Australia’s reputation at risk. Meanwhile, other countries are moving fast to attract investment, streamline approvals and lower costs. Our competition is not each other – it is the rest of the world. That is why government and industry must work together.
Adding to the argument for urgency is a federal budget under pressure from growing spending on health, aged care, the NDIS, defence and debt servicing. The answer to those pressures is not higher taxes. It is a bigger base in the form of a larger, more productive economy.
That is why proposals like a new cash flow tax are so concerning. They increase the burden on precisely the companies that can choose to invest in Australia – or not. Policy settings must recognise that capital has never been more globally mobile.
The EPBC reforms that passed late last year offer the opportunity to accelerate and improve environmental assessments. But they will only deliver benefits if accompanied by workable national standards and a bilateral agreement between the Commonwealth and WA predicated on one simple principle: One project, one process. No duplication, clear accountability.
On energy, emissions reductions must go hand in hand with reliability and affordability. Low-carbon power grids that are too expensive for existing industry to remain viable – or for new industry to be attracted – will cost jobs and undermine global decarbonisation as production shifts to higher-emitting jurisdictions.
At the start of 2026, Australia faces a simple choice: compete or decline.
If policymakers are serious about lifting productivity and protecting living standards, we must act with urgency to restore our competitiveness and attract the next wave of investment.
The resources sector carries the nation today. With the right partnership between government and industry, it can help build a more diverse, more advanced, and more prosperous Australia long into the future.
