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Lang Hancock, The Sydney Morning Herald Annual Finance and Business Review, October 14, 1969, pp. 1-2.

At the beginning of this century the world used 26-million tons of iron ore (less than Hamersley Iron will be producing when Paraburdoo gets into full swing to support Tom Price).

Today it is using 700 million tons per year. Projections show that in 15 years’ time it will be using 1,400-million tons and will probably keep doubling every 15 years thereafter.

Where does this leave Australia with its 125 million million tons of iron-ore reserves?

It took 10 years to build the Suez Canal. If we took this amount of dirt out of Western Australia in the form of iron ore every single year, it will take longer to exhaust our reserves than it took man’s ancestors to come out of the trees and walk on two legs.

The Hamersley Iron Field is closer by sea to two-thirds of the world’s population than it is to Sydney.

In that vast sea of human beings there are only about three steel mills outside of Japan. USA has over 200. What a golden opportunity for north-west Australia to become the Ruhr of South-East Asia.

Our public is constantly being brainwashed with the story that Australian-produced steel is the cheapest in the world. It certainly should be, seeing that the major production costs by far, namely the positioning of the raw material at the steel mill’s door, are all in its favour.

On the other hand, the popular excuses for Australia not doing better industrially is because we have to compete with cheap Japanese labour; this is only in the minds of the uninformed.

Let me quote a recent observer of the Japanese economy:

The bare statistics of Japan’s growth and prosperity since World War II are worth citing — if for no other reason than to demolish any lingering impressions that this is still a country of cheap labour and interesting but generally inferior technology.

The average purchasing power of the average Japanese worker is on a level with the French worker’s.

In mechanical creature comforts, the Japanese are ahead, ranking with the British and the Germans in the percentage of households having refrigerators, washing machines and other electric appliances.

The percentage of Japanese families with ‘terehi’ (TV) sets is an awesome 90 per cent — just behind the USA.

Despite the above facts business people in Perth who are contemplating building their factories and offices in that State seem content to be informed by their architects that they must make provisions for a 50 per cent increase in price for 30 per cent of the steel being used, because it is imported, through failure of the local manufacturer to supply.

American steel mills, some of which are at present in the news, realise that the efficiency of the Japanese steel industry and its impact on world markets are indeed a threat to their supremacy.

They realise that if they are to continue to compete they must take a leaf out of the Japanese book.

The American steel mills, using somewhat antiquated techniques and being strategically badly located (they are not on the ocean front with access to world trade routes) realise that if they are to continue to compete they must shift their location to a seaside nearer the cheaper high-grade sources of supply that the Japanese are now enjoying.

In short, this means bringing their capital, manufacturing and marketing techniques to Australia, or to Asia itself if Australian Governments prove too unworldly in their attitude to wooing much-needed large-scale capital.

The Hamersley Iron Field — this colossal freak of nature — was created some 1,700 million years ago over a period of some 10 million years. In comparison with which, Australians (who are claiming it as their rightful heritage) might do well to remember that the European occupation of this country amounts to something less than 200 years.

When viewed in this perspective by the “United and have-not Nations” are we right in allowing the Canberra socialists to dictate to the world that they will so regulate, ration and restrict this natural phenomenon that the world can neither buy it nor develop it and, what is more significant, neither can we.

In keeping with the above remarks, the much heralded Gorton guidelines policy should be viewed very cautiously because of the added power that it gives to the bureaucracy.

One hopeful aspect of the discovery, proving and development of the Pilbara iron that should appeal to virile people as that it has been a private enterprise effort throughout.

Australian Government played no constructive part in getting it moving.

The huge iron deposits were and still are being brought into production despite Government embargoes, restrictions and blankets on titles, not to mention excessive taxation on risk capital.

W.A.’s mineral reserves are not limited to iron.

We have large quantities of gypsum which could one day be used for fertilisers, e.g. 2,500 million tons in one deposit alone. We have rich deposits of copper and vanadium in the Whim Creek field, as well as manganese, solar salt, bauxite, coal and bentonite, all in vast commercial quantities.

The nickel discoveries in W.A. justify a complete book of history, not an article in a newspaper.

Similarly, the bauxite in the Darling Ranges, allied to the gas at Dongara, is a development of national importance.

Collie coal for use in the agglomerate processes soon to be set up in the Hamersley Iron Region cries out for development. This development requires large capital and a certain amount of ingenuity to overcome the problems inherent in Collie.

At the moment the crucial reserves of ore are frozen in Government hands. Short of a nuclear blast, it is hard to see what will bring them out of deep freeze.

So much for the minerals that W.A. has in abundance. What about the mineral that is in exceedingly short supply in the whole of Australia, namely water?

The Ord River scheme has been kicked from pigeon-hole to pigeon-hole for the past 50 years, during which time scientists have been experimenting with crop after crop without much hope of success (short of the taxpayers’ benevolence by way of subsidy).

However, there is one absolutely certain marketable product of the Ord and Fitzroy Rivers, i.e. water; let me repeat, water.

If the Ord water was diverted to the proposed dam site on the Fitzroy, it would then be only approximately a distance of 480 miles to build a pipeline to either Port Hedland (a town in which not long ago beer on occasions was cheaper than clean drinking water) or the vast Hamersley Iron Region.

Before some dynamo of human inertia propounds from his becushioned office chair some quasi-scientific theory why this is impossible, let him reflect upon the guts of that older generation of West Australians who built a pipeline 350 miles up hill to supply what should really be regarded as one mine at Kalgoorlie, with nothing more than picks, shovels and wheel-barrows to work with.

Are we to believe that in this lotus land of socialism the will to win of the modern generation has become so weakened by welfare handouts that the building of a 480-mile downhill pipeline, aided by the giant machines and earth-moving equipment of today, to feed the Pilbara treasure-house is a task beyond us? Surely not.

A much simpler scheme would be to dam the Fortescue River at Gregory’s Gap and divert the water into the Harding River to a dam site near Woodbrook as a means of supply Cape Lambert with water.

In order to capitalise fully on our material riches W.A. needs.

  1. To enter the nuclear with its cheap power, clean cities, healthy people and plenty of water — water which nuclear-blasted dams would save from being wasted as it runs uselessly to the sea in flood time.
  2. Practically unlimited and unrestricted quantities of foreign risk capital, repeat risk capital, i.e. the foreigners take the risks and the Australians get the benefits by having the jobs and industries permanently within their shores. In times of war the mines, railways and production capacity are physically within our land, irrespective of who has a piece of scrip lying in a safe overseas to say that they own it.
  3. An awakening by Australians to learn the production, engineering, managing and financing techniques, so that they too can learn to take calculated risks and thus play an increasingly important part in the development of our practically unlimited resources. If this is done Australia will in turn become an exporter of capital, which is as Britain was, and USA is today, so that in the long term the fear of foreign capital should not be the bogy that it is held up to be at present.
  4. A recognition that Australia’s future is dependent entirely on prospectors continually making fresh discoveries. If the essential but dying race of prospectors is to be kept alive they must be allowed to sell their discoveries to capital-supplying corporations tax free. Not only does the present interpretation of the Act need revising, but the Act itself needs to be extended to cover discoveries of all minerals.
  5. To encourage prospecting, Governments need to withdraw from the field of royalty in favour of the prospector. Royalty is a vicious sectional inflationary tax imposed upon the mining industry exclusively. It is without economic or moral justification.
  6. The Commonwealth Government needs to conserve the value of the Australian currency in order to keep production costs down in the face of world competition and to encourage saving by the thrifty and responsible people so that they do not suffer in their old age.

It will serve Australia badly if the vast unearned sums of money reaching the Treasury through mineral development are not offset by a lowering of the taxation burden to keep the money in the hands of the producers in order to produce still more goods to offset inflation.

For instance, when Tom Price and Paraburdoo are fully developed Hamersley Iron will be contributing something like $100 million per year to the Federal Treasury.

This money and similar amounts from other producers will be purely inflationary if spent by the Government on non-productive avenues, unless counterbalanced by reduction in taxation to the producers.

  1. To carry out the above we need peace in our time. The F-111 system of warfare will help in this regard — costly to purchase; one-third of the cost of other systems to operate.

Given the above set of conditions I believe that a Japan-like growth is possible for Western Australia.

Let’s look at one private enterprise scheme which could be developed short of Government interference based on a central giant-size international 300,000 tons capacity port at Cape Lambert, strategically located to serve the bulk of the companies operating in the Hamersley Iron Field, not only for iron but for other minerals in the Pilbara.

This scheme is laid out on the attached sketch.

Lang Hancock 1969 sketch

The plan involves making Cape Lambert the outlet port for Koodiaderie iron, connected by rail through the George River and Fortescue Valleys. Because of its natural advantages Cape Lambert could also take care of the expansion of outputs from Hamersley and Mr Newman.

Transcending all of the above developments in importance is the need for Australia to enter the nuclear age with its cheap, clean power, tremendously cheap explosive forces, giving rise to cheap mining and large scale harbour excavation lending capability to the giant ships of the future to bring Australia ever nearer to the world markets.

In the Pilbara iron situation we now have several ports in existence, with several companies operating, all with their own small power plants spread miles apart. The companies are dynamic, privately owned enterprises, but operating singly not one of them has a need large enough to justify the installation of a nuclear power station.

Jointly they could consume some 200 megawatts in the foreseeable future, this being the minimum justification for a nuclear plant.

It is beyond the imagination and capability of government.

How then is the breakthrough to be made?

The answer could lie in attracting some foreign company with adequate capital and experience in building nuclear power plants to the Pilbara iron field by offering them equity in a large iron ore deposit, whereby they would become basic operators in their own right so that in their own interest they would find it worthwhile to install a nuclear power plant and sell off the surplus power to the other producers in the field.

They could not of course do this under the onerous taxation conditions that exist at present relative to mining installations not lodged on a mining lease.

The place for the nuclear power plant must be on the coast adjacent to sea water at a centrally located point relative to the Hamersley Range iron field.

It could not be installed on one company’s mine site, which it would need to do under the present unrealistic tax set-up to avoid hardship.

(in order of appearance on
  1. Ron Manners’ Heroic Misadventures
  2. Hancock's Australia
  3. Hancock on Government Help
  4. Wake Up Australia: Excerpts Part 1
  5. Wake Up Australia: Excerpts Part 2
  6. Lang Hancock's Five Point Plan to Cripple Australia
  7. Governments Consume Wealth — They Don't Create It
  9. Jump on the Joh bandwagon
  11. Governments — like a red rag to a Rogue Bull
  12. Lang Hancock's Pilbara-Queensland Railway Proposal
  13. Singo, Howard and Hancock Want to Secede
  14. Lang Hancock's Foreword to Rip Van Australia
  17. A Condensed Case for Secession
  18. Hancock gets tough over uranium mining
  19. Hancock's threat to secede and faith in Whitlam
  20. PM's sky-high promise to Lang
  22. Govt "villain" in eyes of new party
  23. The spread of Canberra-ism
  24. Govt should sell the ABC, says Lang Hancock
  25. 1971 Monday Conference transcript featuring Lang Hancock
  26. Aborigines, Bjelke and the freedom of the press
  27. The code of Lang Hancock
  28. Why not starve the taxation monster?
  29. Lang Hancock 1978 George Negus Interview
  30. Party Promises to Abolish Tax
  31. Right-wing plot
  33. WA's NCP commits suicide
  34. "You can't live off a sacred site"
  35. Hancock: King of the Pilbara
  36. Bludgers need not apply
  37. New party formed "to slash controls"
  38. Workers Party Reunion Intro
  39. Workers Party is born as foe of government
  40. Government seen by new party as evil
  41. Ron Manners on Lang Hancock
  42. Does Canberra leave us any alternative to secession?
  43. Bury Hancock Week
  44. Ron Manners on the Workers Party
  45. Lang Hancock on Australia Today
  46. Hancock and Wright
  47. Lang Hancock on Environmentalists
  49. Lang Hancock, Stump Jumper
  50. Lang Hancock: giant of the western iron age
  51. The Treasury needs a hatchet man
  52. We Mine to Live
  53. Get the "econuts" off our backs
  55. Gina Rinehart, Secessionist
  56. 1982 NYT Lang Hancock profile
  57. Enter Rio Tinto
  58. Hamersley and Tom Price
  59. News in the West
  60. Positive review of Hancock speech
  62. Australia's slide to socialism
  63. The Great Claim Robbery
  64. Why WA must go it alone
  65. Lang Hancock in 1976 on Public Picnics and Human Blights
  67. Resource Management in Australia: Is it possible?
  68. The gospel of WA secession according to Lang Hancock
  69. Crystal Balls Need Polishing
  70. Minerals - politicians' playthings?
  71. John Singleton-Ita Buttrose interview (1977)
  74. Singleton: the White Knight of Ockerdom
  75. Tactics change by Hancock
  76. Lang Hancock complains to Margaret Thatcher about Malcolm Fraser
  78. Lang Hancock on nuclear energy
  80. Lang Hancock's Favourite Books
  81. 1977 Lang Hancock Canberoo poem
  82. Hancock's playing very hard to get
  83. Hancock proposes a free-trade zone
  84. An Open Letter to Sir Charles Court
  85. John Singleton 1976 ocker Monday Conference Max Harris debate
  86. Lang Hancock in 1984 solves Australian politics
  88. Lang Hancock asks what happened to Australia's rugged individualism?
  89. Precis of Ludwig Plan for North-West
  93. Invest in free enterprise
  94. Democracy is dead in Australia and Lang Hancock's education
  95. Lang Hancock Incites Civil Disobedience
  96. Hancock sounds call to battle Canberra
  97. Mining policy a threat
  98. Over Whitlam's head
  100. Lang Hancock on saving Australia from socialism
  101. Secede or sink
  102. Australia can learn from Thatcher
  103. John Singleton. Horseracing. Why?
  104. How Lang Hancock would fix the economy
  105. Lang Hancock: victim of retrospective legislation
  106. Lang Hancock supports Joh for PM
  107. Hancock seeks miners' tax haven in the north
  108. The Ord River Dam
  109. Why Lang Hancock invested in Australia's film industry
  111. Australia's biggest newspaper insider on manipulating the media
  112. 1980 Lang Hancock-Australian Penthouse Interview
  113. Canberra: bastion of bureaucracy
  114. Pilbara can be the Ruhr for South-East Asia
  115. 1982 Lang Hancock-John Harper Nelson Interview
  117. Our leaders are powerless
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