Limiting Australia’s ballooning coal exports is good for the economy

The Conversation: Research by The Australia Institute suggests that slowing down the pace of coal exports would actually result in enormous benefits to the Australian economy. It would allow our other key export industries – including manufacturing, tourism, education and agriculture – to expand, employing more people and paying more tax. Because these industries are all far more labour intensive than mining, less subsidised and mostly better taxpayers than mining, it would lead to more jobs and increasing state and federal revenue in the long run....

The unprecedented rise in the Australian dollar is primarily driven by increasing commodity prices, and the massive $260 billion influx of foreign capital to fund the construction of mines and gas fields... This has had a devastating impact on our non-mining exporters. Manufacturers who were receiving $100 for a product sold into the American market a few years ago now receive less than $70 for the equivalent item...

Hotel rooms, meals and tours and university courses are similarly more expensive for those thinking of visiting Australia. Australian tourism visitors have dropped by around 250,000 over the last decade, as more Australians holiday overseas, and overseas tourists go elsewhere. This is during a 20% boom in global tourism over the last decade.

Since the beginning of the mining boom, Australia’s rural sector has lost $43.5 billion in export income. This includes $14.9 billion in 2010-11 alone. These losses have occurred because the mining boom has forced the Australian dollar to historic highs. The beef industry took a $2 billion dollar hit last year alone...

Adding fuel to the fire, the mining boom has created an acute skills shortage. This is simple supply and demand. If you plan to build $260 billion dollars’ worth of mining projects at once, it will create enormous demand for a narrow set of skills that are also important to other industries. This makes it much harder for other businesses to recruit and retain employees...