The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has responded to the Federal Budget, saying that it "correctly recognises the importance of a strong and growing minerals sector to Australia’s economy and to Commonwealth revenues".

 

The MCA highlighted three areas of Government spending it considers  crucial to ‘tackling emerging capacity constraints’

  • The 2011-12 Budget provides a promising framework to tackle the looming capacity constraint of skilled labour in our growing minerals sector
  • the lift in permanent skilled migration, the creation of enterprise or regional-focussed migration agreements and a streamlining of the processing of temporary skilled migration will help tackle immediate constraints.
  • targeted spending on regional infrastructure, including transport bottlenecks in West Australia and Queensland, is ‘overdue but welcome.’

 

The council said the budget contains "welcome measures to assist the eventual return to surplus", although it believes that given the current terms of trade,  the economy should already be ‘back in the black’ .

 

"‘There remains much to be done’ in terms of improving industry project approvals, infrastructure improvement and regulatory reform."

 

The council has also attacked the Government’s plan to return to a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) as dangerous to international competitiveness of Australian exports.