Saturday Extra

This week the Pilbara Area Consultative Committee, in north-western Western Australia, organised a conference called Riding The Boom.

At issue? Can this town and region really hold together in the face of the phenomenal rates of mining and development?

About 10,000 (mainly men) fly in and out of this region, temporarily boosting a Karatha population of around 12,000. They don't settle down here, even for a short time.

So if places like Karratha aren't more 'normalised' can the boom be sustained into the future?

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Geraldine Doogue: Hello there, it's Geraldine Doogue bringing you this particular part of Saturday Extra from Karratha in the north of Western Australia, the centre of the most lucrative mining boom Australia has ever seen.

For instance, I'm standing in front of something that really looks like it's a piece of 22nd century science fiction: it's the huge North West Shelf natural gas plant, which alone is worth about 1.4% of Australia's GDP. It converts gas from the sea bed, into liquid natural gas, LNG, for which prices are predicted to soar. It's a joint venture operated by Woodside.

And more or less just behind the hill, is a mammoth 2-kilometre long train full of iron ore, brought from Rio's Marandoo Mine, making the six-hour long journey to the port of Dampier, to be shipped off to modernise China.

So it's really an extraordinary story of these two energy sources. We've reported on it to you, I've read loads about it, but to see it in the flesh is really quite something. And it's going to go on for years and years to come, if that is, there are enough people to service this boom, and there are quite a few questions emerging about just this. In fact we're going to take you now to the first session of a big conference being held in Karratha over these next few days, called Riding the Boom. All manner of people from the area, big and small business alike, mums and dads, the police, doctors, government representatives, they're all going to gather to really ask the fundamental question: can the Pilbara be made into a home for people, or will it just stay a workplace?

[Applause]

Geraldine Doogue: Can I introduce you to Senator Glenn Sterle, who in fact is now a Senator but started in the trucking industry and worked for 12 to 13 years full time for the TWU. Fred Riebeling I know many of you know, he's Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, and a long-time resident and about to step down himself at the end of the year, Senator Andrew Murray, who's serving out his last few weeks—is it weeks now? Months, as a Democrat Senator. Eve Howell, you've already met; Carl Binning is vice-president of sustainability at BHP Billiton, and Carl, obviously BHP very much centred on Hedland and I think Carl it will be terrific to hear BHP's perspective. And Stephen Moir, who is the managing director of the Small Business Development Corporation. Thank you very much indeed for being here tonight.

We thought that one of the problems was when I was being briefed for all this, I could hear so many different perspectives, so many different constituencies represented, or likely to be represented in this next two-day conference, and I said to Colleen and Nicole, 'Well look, what do you think success means for all these different people? How would they define success in the Pilbara? Maybe that's a good place to start, just to hear how the different constituencies think about that term: What's a successful Pilbara?'

So I'm going to start with Fred Riebeling. What words do you put to that term, 'a successful Pilbara?'

Fred Riebeling: Well my personal view is that success is determined in this boom scenario by the creation of the next generation of jobs for our kids, making this community fully sustainable and dealing with the problems that the biggest movement the state has ever seen is creating and one of those of course is the problems we have with delivery of housing, and that's the major problem and needs to be solved.

Geraldine Doogue: So that it's got an intergenerational quality that people can imagine staying here.

Fred Riebeling: Yes, we have to actually create a real market. We have an artificial housing market in Karratha, that is created by the major companies having ownership of about 80% of the real estate market, and we have to what we can to create a real market, and when the real market is created, positions such as at the hospitals and the like, can actually be filled. I don't think there's any great negative thoughts about not properly staffing services to the community. At the moment the great inhibitor is housing, and that needs to be addressed and is being addressed, maybe not quick enough but it is being addressed.

Geraldine Doogue: Andrew Murray, you've actually contributed to the parliamentary committee examining housing affordability, and have spoken extremely well I thought in the House about this. You've really thought long and hard about this, and you've travelled around the state and compared and contrasted places like Kalgoorlie, the Kimberley and here. So what do you think it should represent?

Andrew Murray: I'd start by saying this to you, that success for Pilbara people should be measured by when this panel of outsiders is able to be replaced by a panel of people from the Pilbara district. And what I mean by that is at the moment the Pilbara has to look for outsiders to solve its problems. They're not able to solve them on their own. And so what I've had a look at is—why is that a problem? And essentially we have a problem of political will, ineffectiveness and we have a problem of law and ability. You have to ask yourself why is it when every bigshot in the country, in politics, in business, in the media, from the community, have all been up here, all had a look at this issue, have all heard the frustrations of people, but those frustrations still haven't been addressed. So before I would get into the nitty-gritty about which you referred I'd say you have to tackle those two big issues first.

Geraldine Doogue: So it has to have a sufficient quality within to mount its case better, is that what you mean?

Andrew Murray: That's right. I mean the Pilbara produces 15% of a country's exports. If it gets .15% of the country's attention, that'd be a lot. We just don't get the message out. Now someone like Sharon Burrows from the ACTU helped coordinate and absolutely magnificent community campaign called Rights at Work, which featured strongly in the last election. If business, the community, industry, would put enough money together and mount a sustained media driven assault on the political world, it would get a lot more attention. I mean the issues just are known about but not being acted upon, so you've got to pressure people to act upon them. Once you've done that, and you've got their attention, you then have to find a way to resolve it. In my view you have to resolve it as a kind of ational emergency, so when the Bali disaster occurs, in go the co-ordinators, and they co-ordinate and sort it. When we had the disaster in Queensland, in went the co-ordinators and they sorted it.

Geraldine Doogue: So you want Peter Cosgrove do you?

Andrew Murray: Well you know, he's a man, but he has that military ability to get at the issue. I mean doesn't it strike you as extraordinary that everyone knows the problem, and it's not solved yet? That still the Pilbara looks like it's just been thrown up, it's got none of the majesty and the strength and the history of a Kalgoorlie. It's got no richness to it.

Geraldine Doogue: Stephen Moir, you must be listening to this through gritted teeth. Is this right, that in a way—I'll put it bluntly—you haven't mobilised here well enough?

Stephen Moir: I'm not sure, I mean for me, the true measure of success would be that if we turned off the majority of activity in the resources sector today, that tomorrow we would still have viable communities. And one of my major concerns with what's happening in the Pilbara and to a lesser extent what's potentially going to happen in the Kimberley, is the fact that small businesses are finding it increasingly more difficult to operate with the cost pressures and the skills supply—I don't know how many small business operators there are in the audience, but I'm sure they'll agree with that, that right now the one place in Australia that I wouldn't want to be operating a small business, unfortunately, on the back of this boom, is right here. Because the pressures on small business to find accommodation, not only for themselves but for their business and also for their staff, to meet the costs of the wages, and I don't know how true it is, but I heard a story the other day that one of the local retailers was advertising for a manger and was offering $75,000. I mean that's an extraordinary position to be in, small business, and you have to have significant turnovers to be able to survive that sort of pressure. So my measure of success really will be that we've got a very viable and vibrant community when all this activity starts to cool off, whenever that may be.

Geraldine Doogue: I must say I've got a lot of sympathy for what Andrew is saying, is that it's going to have to be a massive, much more professionalized emergency-related campaign in order to get there. Now can you see the germ of that at all?

Stephen Moir: Yes, absolutely. Take the small business sector for instance, doing things like tax relief and other sorts of assistance programs; I think we're past that, we probably are at the point—and as much as most people in government would hate to mess around with market forces, that some form of intervention to ensure that we have viable communities is put into place, and I'm sure that the major resource companies in the chamber would agree that one of the major attractions for their employees is that you've got good amenities within the regions of their working. One of the reasons that we had the comment, albeit jokingly, that we're back in Port Hedland and back here for another two weeks, we can actually try and effect that change by having good amenities within the regions.

Geraldine Doogue: Well let's ask Carl and Eve, and the minerals and energy people, whether this is so. Like how do you hear that, Carl, do you agree that the companies are committed, but what happens next?

Carl Binning: Companies are committed, there's no doubt about that, and are seeking to invest in the communities in which we operate. But there are huge challenges, and I think I really agree with the point that we've got to get the local markets working. So I was thinking about it; I come from a wool farming background, I'm reasonably new to the minerals industry, and if you think about the wool boom, about the towns that were built around wool, or you think about the gold rush in Victoria, with these quite grand buildings with big wide avenues and I'm curious as to why that hasn't occurred in the Pilbara. I think the second thing is that the nature of the players has changed. The industries are larger. Governments are larger and more urbanised, and so no player can meet this challenge alone, it requires a unique partnership between local communities, indigenous people, all tiers of government, local, state and federal, and industry. And that type of collaboration has been quite difficult to achieve and deliver in Australia.

Geraldine Doogue: Is there a model? Have you seen it anywhere?

Carl Binning: Well I think we're trying. There's something called the Pilbara Industries Communities Council which is facilitating a dialogue in Perth and in Canberra around what is it that the Pilbara needs, and what's the scale of investment.

Geraldine Doogue: But I'm told that for all its virtue, it's sort of limping along; there's a sense that maybe 'limps' is the wrong word, but it's taking its time, there's no sense of urgency. You can tell me I'm wrong, if you like, but -

Carl Binning: I think on the industry side there's certainly a great sense of urgency through that forum. But I think the problems, or the issues, aren't trivial. It's one of the great ironies that when you're growing hard, it's almost the harvest time to be strategic, and invest wisely. And the shortage of people that are available, the shortage of skills that are available, the difficulty in getting things done, the difficulty of building houses, by building to provide services, industries sometimes criticise or good people then come and work for us. But it's an overall indicator that the labour market up here is extremely constrained.

The final challenge I would say is that in modern Australia the demographic's changed. People are much more mobile. People will come to the Pilbara to be permanent residents, but people will also come for a time and some people will just want to work here. And I think a fundamental part of envisaging g the Pilbara is an acceptance of that reality. It's not something that's been imposed, it's something that the people who live and work here, actually seek, and it's not either/or, it's about how we integrate different people with different aspirations into a modern regional Australia.

Having said all that, is the Pilbara successful? I think it's enormously successful. So I think there is a huge opportunity but there are these barriers I've talked about, how we together address those barriers, and how we define the communities we want to live in. I do think there is a little bit of an absence of a clear, coherent, agreed vision for the Pilbara.

Geraldine Doogue: Well that's very interesting, putting it like that. Eve, how do you see this from Woodside's point of view, as one of the companies involved, how much does the company see itself playing a role and making this a livable community?

Eve Howell: It's an enormous part of what we're focused on. I would endorse some of the things that were said before though, that companies had to work collectively; we will do more by working collectively than trying to do little pieces individually. But the North West Shelf Venture is very much committed to doing things here. But perhaps I could steer back to what would I think about success, and to me, success would be more people in our Perth office, you know Woodside's offices operate at the North West Shelf, actually having 10 people competing for the one good job up in Karratha. We have a lot of people up here in Karratha.

And the other thing I think is really important, and it's been touched on by some of the other speakers, is that we stop talking about this as the boom, because once we talk about -

Geraldine Doogue: As the boom?

Eve Howell: As long as we talk about the boom, everybody thinks the bust is around the corner, and therefore why bother to do too much because it's not going to last. And to me, a measure of success would be that we stop referring to this fantastic resource as boom, we actually start talking about that this is a sustainable part of what Australians do, and that this will be generation after generation who are going to be in this region. And I think that to me will be a success when the rest of Australia actually stops thinking that this is a temporary aberration and therefore why should we worry too much about it, because we can fly people in and out, and it will all be over soon.

Geraldine Doogue: That's very interesting, language I think, does matter. And words are like bullets, as Bill Hayden once said. Could I ask you to thank in the normal way, all our special guests tonight: Senator Murray, Fred Riebeling, Eve Howell, Carl Binning and Stephen Moir.

[Applause]

Geraldine Doogue: And Eve Howell, whom you heard last there, is vice-president of the North West Shelf Joint Venture. I want to thank all the ABC North West people who helped us a great deal and the Pilbara Action Consultative Committee.

And I might add, the following day that I was there, the Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development, Gary Grey, turned up, and labeled some of the whingers at the forum for having a go. And he said, 'Look, Pilbara town shouldn't be treated any differently from other regional communities across the country, and if you want to actually make an argument, get a community vision together and don't just come and whinge.' So no doubt there'll be a great deal of talking in the Pilbara community about Gary Grey's rather blunt assessment.

Guests

Senator Andrew Murray
Democrat Senator

Eve Howell
Vice President of the North West Shelf Joint Venture

Stephen Moir
Managing Director of SBDC, the Small Business Development Corporation

Fred Riebeling
Speaker of the Legislative Assembly
Member for the Pilbara

Carl Binning
Vice President Sustainability
BHP Billton

Story Researcher and Producer

Julie Browning