Since the days of the gold rush and the wool boom, Australia has always relied heavily on its great primary industries – mining, farming, forestry and fishing and their supporting transport, energy and processing industries. First was the export of hides and tallow, wool and timber. Then came the great discoveries of gold, coal, copper and silver-lead-zinc, followed by exports of wheat, butter, meat and cotton. Luckily the effects of droughts in the rural sector were often moderated by booms or new discoveries in minerals. Today government royalties and taxes on our massive exports of coal, gas, iron ore, nickel, copper, silver-lead-zinc, aluminium and uranium have become the main-stays of the tax-consuming and ever-growing state and federal bureaucracies. These back-bone industries, directly or indirectly, have always paid the wages of most of the workers of Australia.
Every one of these primary industries must have three things –