THE PLUNDER UNDER DOWN UNDER

...Democratization of the control of public corporations is important in its own right...

...With the leveling of the forest, salt deposits, which vein the deeper layers of the soil in naturally high concentrations, leach into the streams and rivers, endangering Perth's only fresh water supply within thousands of kilometers...

...Large sections of the manufacturing'sector will suffer, including many leading Australian companies which have traditionally supported the Liberal Party led by Malcolm Fraser...

...This action by the Western Australian government, though extreme, was not altogether unexpected...

...11 effective planning and control over the rate of extraction...

...Gladstone is not the only place in Australia coming unstuck under the impact: The continent nation, today one of the world's hottest mining frontiers, is drawing multinational energy companies Down Under as it drew gold miners in the rush of the 1850s...

...Fortunately for the Aborigines, the companies involved have been unable to line up much business because of a drop in international demand for uranium...

...But it should also generate mass support for what would be genuinely public corporations and for their policies...

...and, along with the smelters, they will also draw heavily on limited water...

...Amax wanted out...

...Soon there will also be an aluminum smelter, a metallurgical cokeworks, and a cement plant...

...In what Australia's leading financial newspaper called "the giveaway stakes," the states undercut each other in offering inducements, such as cheap electricity for aluminum smelters...

...The costs of the boom are now becoming apparent to most Australians...

...The less well-off are beginning to realize that they are expected to finance it through a cut in their standard of living...

...Restrictions on profits for foreign parent companies are minimal...

...The most important of these at present is coal...

...courts to prevent Alcoa and Reynolds from expanding their bauxite operations because of unacceptable environmental risks...

...The two states have much in common...

...These characteristics are manifest in Australia's publicly owned electric utilities...

...What the foreign investment is more likely to produce is social disruption and environmental degradation...

...Other U.S., British, and Japanese companies followed quickly, so that by 1975, 60 per cent of the coal industry was under foreign control...

...Developmentalism involves a relatively high level of government intervention in the economy to regulate and...

...Since 1977 it has strongly opposed the Australian involvement in uranium mining or any other phase of the nuclear fuel cycle...

...There are good reasons why Exxon and companies like it find Australia enticing...

...It has large, accessible reserves of many minerals...

...But since then, the boom-talk has been toned down considerably, and plans for several more aluminum smelters and an oil shale project have been postponed or scrapped...

...In the 1960s, Australia became the world's largest producer and exporter of bauxite, the principal source of aluminum...

...Moreover, the reserves generally lie within a few hundred kilometers of the seaboard and the main centers of domestic energy use— handy for both local and export markets...

...The suits are not meant to put an end to all new mining and resource processing projects in Australia...

...Aborigines in the neighboring state of Western Australia have no land rights and are treated with a callous disregard by the state government...

...Broadly based coalitions of trade unionists, environmentalists, and local citizens have been established in a number of regions of the country particularly affected by the boom...

...it is committed to a repudiation of uranium export contracts which have been approved by the present federal government...

...In 1976, the state government granted a petroleum exploration license for the Noonkanbah area to a consortium led by Amax...

...Complementing the wealth of resources is a government eager to see that they are mined...

...Not surprisingly, discontent is brewing within Liberal Party ranks...

...Interest rates have risen steeply as the demand for capital has grown and as the government has attempted to curb the inflationary impact of the recent flood of foreign capital...

...Before it could withdraw, the state government reinstated the license, commandeered a drilling rig, and organized squads of police to escort the rig on a 2,000-kilometer journey to the test-well site...

...The government parties are also facing problems in the longer term...

...This may explain the move, announced last August, to renege on some of the tax concessions made to the mining industry...

...Essential to achievement of these goals is direct government participation by federal or state-owned petroleum and minerals corporations...

...Now, however, a start has been made towards grass-roots political organizing around issues raised by the energy boom...

...Most of the coal runs in thick seams close to the surface, and it is easily extracted by open-cut mining...

...Obviously, it is the responsibility of the federal government to uphold Australia's national interest in such arrangements...

...Unemployment is at levels not seen since the 1950s, and there is no evidence that it will be reduced by the rising flood of new, mainly foreign capital spending...

...In a few years a vast shale oil project may begin nearby...

...The conservative Liberal Party which came to power under the leadership of Malcolm Fraser made no secret of its support for foreign investment...

...All this has led to sharp differences of opinion within Australia on resource exploitation...

...Nominally a democratic socialist party, in practice it is a coalition of individuals and groups, including some with very conservative views...

...Weaver of Weaver Oil and Gas Corporation wrote Hugh Saddler, the author of "Energy in Australia: Politics and Economics," is with the Australian National University's Center for Resources and Environmental Studies in Canberra...

...The Plunder under Down Under BY HUGH SADDLER Australia: a continent for sale Twenty years ago the economy of the town of Gladstone on the central coast of Queensland revolved around a meatworks and a small fishing industry...

...more important, to provide infrastructure and subsidies for all kinds of economic activity which are thought to promote "development...

...Now the relative cheapness of Australia's publicly financed coal-produced electricity has resulted in plans for five huge new aluminum smelters—big electricity users—plus additional bauxite mining and alumina refining operations...

...Corporate goals and performance should be subject at regular intervals to detailed public examination...

...In effect, this means running down manufacturing and encouraging capital-intensive, low-employment mining and mineral processing...

...some circumstantial evidence points to the involvement of U.S...

...Environmentalists in Western Australia, with support from colleagues throughout the nation, recently filed suits in U.S...

...In addition, an array of subsidies, services, and, in the words of the Federal Treasury Department, "very generous" tax concessions, welcomes energy companies...

...There is ample international precedent for an alternative mode of development which would emphasize national control over resource development and offer greater potential for spreading benefits to all Australians...

...The Australian legal system does not tolerate such challenges by public-interest groups: Courts give standing only to litigants with a direct pecuniary interest in the outcome of a dispute...

...intelligence agencies and companies in destabilizing the government during 1975...

...It espoused a monetarist approach to economic management—holding down wages and public expenditures and boosting company profits...

...The result will be severe strain on Australia's federal constitution, evoking the conflict now raging, for like reasons, in Canada...

...But lands once of little value to Europeans interested only in raising cattle have turned out to be rich in mineral deposits...

...Large mining and construction projects are the embodiment of "development...

...However, it is obvious that the leadership of the conservative political parties currently in power federally and in several of the resource-rich states have no wish to abandon present policies...

...In other respects, however, these state corporations have rightly come to be regarded as manifestations of the state-as-capitalist...

...During the campaign, the government made much of the benefits that were supposed to flow from a resources boom...

...During the 1970s the Aborigines, most of whom live in northern Australia, won conditional rights to own their traditional lands in some parts of the continent...

...Two mines are now just starting production in the Northern Territory, and the government, which passionately supports uranium mining, is pressing for at least two more mines, in one of which Getty Oil has a large stake...

...On the other side of the continent, near Perth in Western Australia, bauxite mining threatens the magnificent natural forests of jarrah, a valuable hardwood timber...

...Groups directly affected by their activities should exercise significant control over their projects...

...It is too late for regrets...

...A few years ago, a small group of Aborigines living on the fringe of white settlements moved away to make their own lives at a place called Noonkanbah on their traditional land...

...This common enough attitude has taken, in Australia, a particularly intense form, one that might be termed developmentalism...

...And although mining projects are supposed to be at least 50 per cent Australian-owned (75 per cent for uranium), the requirement is sometimes waived "in the national interest...

...Although mild by the standards of most other countries with important petroleum and mineral industries, the Labor policy was hysterically opposed by mining and oil companies, which undoubtedly contributed generously to the conservative parties (there is no legal requirement in Australia for disclosure of campaign contributions...

...Investment by Kaiser Aluminum, Alcoa, Alcan, and Alusuisse led the way...

...Such a citizens' movement, if it gathers sufficient strength, will probably succeed in forcing state governments to make some reforms...

...Accordingly, it is essential that both new and existing state corporations be opened up to scrutiny by the citizens who, in theory, own them...

...The Australian group which has consistently had the worst deal, ever since the first European settlers arrived almost two centuries ago, is the Aboriginal people...

...The high interest rates have dealt a hard blow to small businesses and home buyers, long the mainstay of the conservative parties...

...Both governments have taken extreme states' rights attitudes toward the federal government...

...Under their soil lies the bulk of Australia's known mineral wealth...

...Uranium is the most important of these...

...Now the meatworks has gone, and in its place are a huge alumina refinery, coal-shipping docks, and a power station...

...The well was dry...

...Its strategy for Australia's economic future is based on so-called investment-led growth...

...The Labor Party lost the general election of October 1980, although it did significantly increase its share of the vote...

...11 indigenous technical capability and a nationally based research and development effort...

...Esso Australia, the local Exxon subsidiary—with operations in oil, gas, coal, uranium, and oil shale—predicted in a company report that Australia would rival Saudi Arabia in energy production within the next twenty years...

...Faced with the need to finance infrastructure—power stations and ports in particular—the federal and state governments have cut back on social spending...

...The population of the town has nearly quadrupled since 1960, but almost nothing has been done about municipal services...

...What the activists want is an opportunity for potentially affected communities to have some say in deciding the future of their environments, the use of best available technology to control pollution, and time to examine carefully the wish-lists of the extractive industries...

...The forest-clad hillsides, under which the bauxite lies, are a water catchment for Perth and its satellite towns, an area with a population of nearly one million...

...The issue of Australian resources development is firmly on the political agenda...

...And unemployment is just as high as in the rest of Australia...

...Eventually the well was drilled...

...H an exploration effort that meets long-term national needs...

...It was dry...

...H the power to control the timing, location , and nature of new investment, not j ust by blocking undesirable investment proposals but also by initiating good projects...

...Throngs of peaceful protesters, both Aboriginal and white, gathered along the route...

...The states of Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, less well-endowed with minerals and more dependent on manufacturing for their economic base, will become relatively poorer...

...These groups have produced excellent research and educational broadsides to persuade Australians to demand some say in the decisions that will affect their lives...

...Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to expect that the party can adopt progressive policies...

...Since so much more investment capital is potentially available outside Australia than within, it is hardly surprising that foreign companies are so favorably treated...

...Conservative politicians now realize that the boom was overrated and are regretting that they ever used the term...

...The conventional argument is that attracting new private investment is one of the most sensible ways of achieving economic growth...

...There are now many such state corporations around the world, and in general they have shown that they are able to promote national interests and diminish the influence of multinational corporations...

...Nor, with the exception of a small fringe of "simple-lifers," does the environmental movement in general wish to do so...

...Western Australia offers "the most hospitable political climate for oil and gas exploration in the free world," O.D...

...A climate of opinion hostile to the government was created...

...The high level of mineral-related investment in both states will certainly enrich their exchequers, at least in the short term...

...Federal approval for investment proposals from foreign companies is almost invariably forthcoming...

...When private drillers tried to pull out, the state commandeered a rig, sent in the police, and sank a well on sacred Aboriginal land...

...11 deliberate use of the mineral industry to build up other manufacturing and service industries...

...Meanwhile, engineers, geologists, and mining executives draw huge salaries while complaining that their companies will not really make much profit but of the boom...

...After months of discussion, argument, and confrontation, Amax last year recognized the wide and bitter opposition not only among Aborigines, but throughout white Australia...

...Housing is in desperately short supply, house prices and rents are out of control, and hundreds of families have lived for years in trailers...

...Although it has held power at the federal level for only twenty years in this century, the Australian Labor Party consistently commands almost half the national vote...

...The previous Labor government had reduced subsidies to the mining industry and was moving to increase public ownership of Australia's mineral resources...

...Australia was a large coal exporter before World War I, but the current export industry goes back only to the 1960s, when Utah Development, then independent but now a General Electric subsidiary, established a highly profitable coking coal trade with Japan...

...in the Oil and Gas Journal last year...

...The Aborigines in the Northern Territory do at least receive a royalty income from the uranium mines...

...Some were arrested...

...Most of these were introduced by the conservative government which took power in November 1975...

...Yet an energy boom is on...

...The key elements of such a policy are, typically: f a taxation and pricing system which expropriates excess profits from resource extraction...

...Since subsidized smelters have been built in each state able to power them with electricity, the outcome has been an unequivocal gain for the aluminum companies...

...Later in the 1970s, multinational oil companies moved in on Australian coal: Exxon, Arco, Shell, and BP, among others, knew a good thing when they saw one...

...In areas like Hunter Valley in New South Wales and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, with their large coal resources, new power plants built to supply aluminum smelters will place heavy demands on public funds...

...Conservative governments have long been in power in both states and are well entrenched by electoral systems blatantly rigged in favor of the incumbent administrations...

...Yet action at the national level is essential...

...Welfare and public transport are almost nonexistent, while schools and health services are plainly inadequate...

...many Australians concerned about the resources boom are looking to the election of a Labor government, committed to progressive policies...

...From 1971 to 1975 the federal Labor government tried to institute progressive policies to control the mineral and energy industries, but it did so in a closed-door, from-the-top-down manner, and made no effort to mobilize public support...

...Australia has some of the largest and richest uranium deposits in the world, most of them beneath Aboriginal land...

...Just as obviously, the present national government has little interest in doing so...

...The resources boom has led to a fundamental restructuring of the Australian economy, a shift toward mineral exports dependent on foreign capital, markets, and technology...

...Amax subsequently decided to drill a well which the Aboriginal people said would pillage several of their sacred sites...

...But a reorientation of the Australian economy toward mineral exports—dependent on foreign capital, foreign markets, and foreign technology—leaves Australians, particularly minority groups, the clear losers...

...Air pollution will worsen, and fluoride emissions may ruin grape vines in nearby vineyards...

...They have grown into secretive, inflexible, bureaucratic juggernauts insensitive to the interests of their employes, the communities where they operate, and the environmental consequences of their behavior...

...Each state government, regardless of which party is in power, has always sought to attract new investment...

...Why are the state governments pursuing these policies...

...It is widely accepted that the higher level of mineral exports will be offset by an increase in imports of manufactured goods...

...For some years the Western Australian authorities and their Queensland counterparts have taken an increasingly repressive, racist, and anti-worker tack...