News

August 18, 2008

What Now Australia? China?... Or Bust?

By Alastair Ford

What have we learned from this year’s Diggers and Dealers? For one thing, the mood grew visibly more downbeat as the week went on. Diggers is up there in the first rank of international mining conferences, but this year, as the world economy tightens up, the global aspect of the convention was slightly less marked. London, for example, which usually sends a strong contingent of mining company directors, financiers, and associated advisers and hangers-on, was notably under-represented. But it wasn’t that that dampened the mood as the days went by. It was the steadily worsening hangovers of the delegates.

Australians, never known for their reticence, have been partying particularly hard over the past few years, as their economy, which is highly geared to metals production and mining, has gone into overdrive. Nowhere is this more evident than in Western Australia, which ranks alongside Queensland as one of the country’s foremost mining states, where the cars are getting more garish, the houses more lavish and the women more expensively decorated. A snapshot of the best performing Western...