Yet another bumper crowd of almost 500 souls filled the River Room at Optus Stadium last Thursday for the WA Mining Club’s October luncheon, featuring Evolution’s Exec Chairman Jake Klein. We at the WAMC have been looking forward to hearing from Jake for quite a while, with his reputation for straight talking and common sense being key ingredients in propelling Evolution Mining to the +$10Bn market cap gold and copper powerhouse that it is today. Based upon the nodding of heads in the room while he spoke and feedback received afterwards, audience members were in furious agreement with the excellent points he was making. Jake delivered a powerful ‘wake up call’, whereby in the current ultra-competitive global market for commodities it is imperative that our political parties establish a level of critical and strategic bipartisanship to underpin the success of our nation and sustain our quality of life into the future. Lamenting constantly changing policies and approvals settings across election cycles and state boundaries, Jake suggested that a strategic and bipartisan multi-decade approach to mining and downstream processing and a mature debate on energy policy is urgently needed to provide certainty of strategic direction and underpin foreign investment into Australia. ……. And in this vein of thought, Jake called out the recent bewildering decision by the federal resources minister, whereby Regis Resources’ McPhillamy’s gold project hit a wall at the final federal hurdle following a lengthy and detailed environmental and heritage approvals process that had garnered local and state support. He rightly pointed out that it is counterproductive and counterintuitive for Regis to have rigorously observed what was considered to be a well understood approvals process, commit years of time and millions of dollars of study investment only to have the project arbitrarily blocked at the 11th hour, amid an approvals regime that is the global benchmark.
It is clear that China has been working on a deliberate multi-decade strategy that has caught the Western world napping and as a result now dominates the global downstream processing market across most of the periodic table, with significant global geopolitical risks emerging as a result of their dominance in the strategic metals space for renewable energy hardware, electric vehicles and defence. Jake provided an example whereby he predicted that our government’s plan to compete against China to produce solar panels in Australia after repatriating the raw materials back from China as finished metals and then competing against their labour and energy cost profiles would be an exercise in utter folly. When asked about the percentage likelihood that Australia could achieve it’s 2050 zero emissions targets given the current politically misaligned and state-based dog’s breakfast approach to energy policy, Jake responded immediately with an emphatic ‘zero chance’. Hopefully Jake’s words ring true with some of those in the halls of power and some common ground can be found within our democracy to lay the foundations for a long term strategy framework going forward. ‘Jake for PM’ was heard more than once in ensuing discussions …..
It was great to see lots of new faces in the room and we trust everyone enjoyed the stimulating and thought provoking presentation and networking opportunities. There was a lot of buzz in the room around the upcoming St Barbara’s Day Luncheon (Friday 29th Nov), which sold out in around an hour ! and will see 1,200 people pack out the River Room to hear from industry legend Dale Elphinstone. Also keep an ear to the ground for upcoming WA Mining Club YP and members only events to get us through to the Liam Twigger chaired “Market Outlook” on a Thursday in late February 2025.
And please remember to email through any comments, complaints and opportunities for improvements (no matter how minor or from how long ago) to Operations Manager Cassandra Brennan – she absolutely loves it 😊
