South Australia Mining Boom

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that some politicians will go to push a pet *project*.

Take the much vaunted "Mining Boom" that Premier Mike Rann has been spruiking for 8 years now and which apparently is set to become the centrepiece of his campaign for re-election in 2010.

I suppose if he talks about it often enough then the local "world class" media will run lots of stories about it and that will result in their audience assuming that it must be true - and then giving Mike and crew a tick in the box on polling day. Or that is the plan.

Here is what Isobel Redmond said in the Age last week.

"The South Australian government is misleading the public by spruiking a mining boom that doesn't exist. Mining production was slow and even mining exploration in the state had taken a hit as a result of the global financial crisis.

We all know this is a resource-rich state and we want to have a mining boom, but thus far what we've had in this state has been an exploration boom - and that has gone backwards in the last 12 months".

"We are second bottom, only with Tasmania below us, in terms of the value of mining as an industry in this state."

This is what I said about the "Mining Boom" in September 2007 - and the story hasn't changed much since.

But if you "Google" "South Australia Mining Boom" you will get about 154,000 hits - most of which are talking it up - which just goes to show why Mike needs all those media staff on his team - to generate the "blurb" to support his *project*.

South Australia probably has a lot of mineral wealth and it might even be a good thing if some of that were dug up and exported - and the process of doing it might even create a few jobs.

But talking about it and wishing it were true does not mean it is true - irrespective of a looming political deadline.