A bumper crowd of well over 500 attended the WA Mining Club’s first luncheon of 2025, with Argonaut’s Liam Twigger corralling a seasoned panel to flush out fascinating insights into what lies ahead this year. In a coup for the Mining Club, and fresh from the release of his insightful documentary titled ‘The Real Cost of Net Zero’, award winning journalist Chris Uhlmann jetted in from Canberra to provide expert commentary around energy policy and politics. Local resource industry pundits in the form of Emma Scotney of De Grey and Minerals 260 and Tim McCormack from Cannacord rounded out an extremely well credentialled panel.
Prior to cranking up the panel discussion we heard from Deb Morrow and Miner’s Promise, a charity organisation established to provide emotional, financial and practical support to families directly affected by workplace mining fatalities across Australia. The WA Mining Club is incredibly proud to partner with Deb and her dedicated team to support their important work, donating a portion of ticket sales from each luncheon to support the cause.
Our panel discussion started with a bang, with Liam inviting Chris Uhlmann to summarise his thoughts on energy policy. In his impassioned response, Chris outlined the irony and duplicity at play in the Eastern states energy market, where it seems we’re ok with selling coal overseas for power generation but unwilling to burn it in Australia to generate power (same atmosphere ……), we’re busily building LNG import terminals up and down the east coast to sure up reliable energy supply whilst paying the international price of LNG, in preference to tapping our own abundant supplies right under our feet, we’re hell bent on rolling out renewable energy harvesting devices such as solar panels and wind turbines, yet the people who support this typically oppose mining (these pieces of apparatus do not grow on trees, cause significant mining and carbon emissions elsewhere in their manufacture and are not recyclable after their relatively short lifespan) and perhaps the most perverse outcome of all is that swathes of Australian native bushland would need to be cleared to plant these sun and wind harvesting devices, let alone the clearing for the extensive network of transmission lines required to deliver power to the grid …. with a fossil fuel backup system required anyway to provide reliable base load power for when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, and the batteries have discharged their last electron. And all to achieve a net zero target that 60% of the world’s emitters have eschewed while Australia contributes only 1% of global emissions and yet remains committed to a policy that is utterly superficial in its environmental credentials. Elsewhere in the world where ‘renewables’ have been deployed at scale, without exception the result has been significantly reduced energy reliability and elevated energy prices. As Chris put it so eloquently – our current energy policy is not only not very smart, it’s putting Australia on a ‘Pathway to Poverty’. Sobering stuff.
The panel then launched into an exploration of a number of interesting topics, from discussing upcoming state and federal elections, the role of the ASX and the concept of ‘peak ESG’ / overregulation (all agreed there was room for simplification without detriment to governance ideals), to the relative outperformance of listed owner led organisations and the propensity for them delisting and going private to sidestep the bureaucratic world of ESG, to the effect of Donald Trump’s tariff (and other) policies. Emma Scotney’s timely presence on the panel was notable for the fact that she represents two boards currently involved in takeovers – Minerals 260 being the potential acquiror of a Norton Goldfields asset at Bullabulling and De Grey Mining’s Pilbara Hemi Project in the crosshairs of the Northern Star juggernaut.
All agreed that with the current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, the erratic tariff policy settings emanating from the USA to persistent inflation, to the gradual dismantling of the global governance bodies that have prevailed since the second world war, we are experiencing the most volatile and unpredictable world that most people have endured in their lifetime. And all agreed that an intelligent way to spend an hour is to jump onto YouTube and watch Chris’ timely documentary ‘The Real Cost of Net Zero’.
Yet again, a great panel discussion led by Liam Twigger in his inimitable style. Thank you also to Chris, Tim and Emma for your insightful commentary on a wide range of topics.
Check out photos from the event here.
Next month we have Minerals Council CEO Tania Constable joining us from Canberra. It’s been an interesting time lately with the rise of activist groups like the EDO and Climate 200, spurious heritage determinations such as that witnessed at Regis Resources McPhillamy’s gold mine in NSW, government policy settings around critical minerals and downstream processing and more recently a dust up over contentious ‘nature positive’ laws. Let’s fill the room at Optus Stadium on Thursday 27th March to show support for Tania and her team, who advocate tirelessly in the Canberra bubble on our industry’s behalf. Tickets are selling fast with well over 300 sold already – ticket sales will be open until around 20th March but don’t be that person who left it until the last minute and then forgot to book.
See you all there, this will be a cracker!
The WA Mining Club aims to provide objectivity on all matters, the article above represents the views of our panelists at the event.
