Five-yearly inquiry into Australia’s productivity performance – Terms of reference

Despite the health and economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Western Australian resources sector was fortunate to reach record sales of $210 billion in 2020-21, employing an average of 149,469 workers onsite. As documented in our ‘Navigating through COVID-19‘ report from last year, this performance is a testament to the government’s willingness to coordinate and collaborate with the sector, the dedicated efforts of a skilled workforce to endure longer roster swings and resilience of the sector in responding to external shocks time after time.

COVID-19 has brought forward underlying tension for two critical long term issues (1) timely access to talent and (2) delays in regulatory approvals. These two areas have reduced the sector’s ability to increase existing or new productive capacity sooner while commodity prices are favourable, constraining economic output.