Rapidly restoring Australia’s investment competitiveness to capitalise on generational opportunity in global energy and resources markets lies at the heart of the 2026-27 Federal Pre-Budget Submission released today by the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA (CME).
Avoiding damaging changes to Australia’s taxation settings, ensuring emissions reductions do not come at the expense of jobs and urgently implementing promised improvements to project assessment timeframes are among CME’s priority focuses.
CME Chief Executive Officer Aaron Morey said Australia’s ability to continue attracting resources investment would play a pivotal role in the future trajectory of national living standards.
“The Australian resources sector invested $1.7 trillion over the past two decades to build an industry that pays the highest average wages in the country and underwrites both the WA and national budgets,” Mr Morey said.
“But the fundamentals that underpinned that investment are eroding quickly. Whether it’s taxation, energy costs or approvals timeframes, we simply aren’t keeping pace with competitors hungry to emulate Australia’s success.
“The opportunity before us is immense – but so is the competition. Without urgent action, Australia risks missing out on the next major wave of global resources investment.”
Energy costs across Australia have roughly doubled since 2020, threatening the viability of existing operations and severely impacting efforts to attract new strategic industries.
While the resources sector supports Australia’s net zero by 2050 ambition, Mr Morey said sacrificing energy reliability and affordability in the pursuit of near-term emissions reductions risked needlessly sending industry offshore and undermining global decarbonisation efforts.
“Western Australia produces just 0.2 per cent of global carbon emissions,” Mr Morey said.
“In return, the world gets 36 per cent of its iron ore, more than 40 per cent of its lithium, 12 per cent of its LNG and significant shares of gold, alumina, rare earths and other critical minerals essential to the energy transition.
“Few places on earth deliver more value for less impact on the climate. Policy interventions that undermine one of the world’s safest and most efficient resources sectors do nothing to lower global emissions. They risk the exact opposite: driving up emissions as industry and investment is instead diverted to jurisdictions with far lower environmental standards.”
Mr Morey said CME strongly opposed the Productivity Commission’s proposed net cashflow tax and reiterated the importance of retaining the Fuel Tax Credit scheme.
“The net cashflow tax proposal is an attack on Western Australia and an attack on the resources sector,” Mr Morey said.
“It targets the exact companies that have a choice about whether to invest in Australia or not. It would deter investment in new mines and technology and send investment offshore. That doesn’t lift productivity – it crushes it.
Mr Morey said Fuel Tax Credits were a longstanding and well-understood feature of Australia’s tax system, designed to ensure businesses are not charged a road user levy when fuel is used off public roads.
“The principle is simple: road funding charges should apply to public road use – and only to public road use,” Mr Morey said.
More than 180,000 Australian businesses spanning mining, agriculture, transport, tourism and fishing legitimately access Fuel Tax Credits, including around 60,000 farmers and thousands of regional and export-exposed operators.
“As the focus turns to reducing emissions and improving energy efficiency, it’s important that policy changes are targeted, predictable and focused on enabling viable alternatives – rather than simply increasing costs on existing operations,” Mr Morey said.
“Maintaining stable tax settings while practical solutions are developed is essential to protecting competitiveness, supporting investment and funding the transition to lower-emissions technologies.”
With landmark reforms to the EPBC Act now legislated, CME has recommended the Federal and State Government work together to quickly negotiate a bilateral agreement that would accredit WA to both assess and approve projects on behalf of the Commonwealth.
“The urgency applied to passing the environmental reforms last year must now be applied to delivering the promised improvements to project assessment timeframes,” Mr Morey said.
“The goal must be having a bilateral agreement up and running within six months of the legislation coming into effect.”
Read CME’s full 2026-27 Federal Pre-Budget Submission here. A summary in the form of a Policy Brief is available here.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
- Taxes: Reiterate the commitment to no new or additional taxes on the resources sector. Reject the introduction of a new 5 per cent net cashflow tax. Commit to retaining the Fuel Tax Credit scheme in its current form.
- Environmental reform: Expedite the accreditation of WA for both EPBC Act assessments and approvals within six months of the legislation coming into effect. Prioritise the development of National Environmental Standards that are workable with WA’s environmental, regulatory and tenure settings.
- Energy: Improve the Capacity Investment Scheme’s design to ensure it fully covers the commercial gap between the price industrial customers can afford to pay and the price generation proponents require to achieve final investment decisions. Retain the technology-neutral Safeguard Mechanism as the principal policy lever driving least-cost decarbonisation across the resources sector. Outline policy proposals that will protect export-facing industries from the risks of carbon leakage.
- Responsible land access: Identify long-term, strategically targeted government funding solutions for First Nations representative bodies to support capacity development and enable representative bodies to maintain essential corporate functions and engage in regulatory processes.
- Critical Minerals: Ensure that prices offered to producers under the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve (CMSR) model reflect Australia’s high reliability, ESG standards and costs of production, and bring forward commencement of the Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive (CMPTI) to 1 July 2026.
Media contacts:
Josh Zimmerman j.zimmerman@cmewa.com / 0404 947 719
Natasha Mutch n.mutch@cmewa.com / 0435 383 382