JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (Amec) on Thursday released a policy platform document in the lead-up to Western Australia’s election in March next year, seeking to gain commitment from political parties on a number of policy positions.

CEO Simon Bennison said that Amec’s Western Australian Policy Platform was aimed at creating jobs through increased exploration activity and reduced business input costs.

The industry body was aiming to stimulate early discussions about the issues raised in the document and obtain commitments from political parties to allow industry to “discover the mines of tomorrow and ensure that Western Australia continues to be an attractive place to invest and conduct business”.

Bennison raised a number of “concerning” trends, including a large decline in greenfield mineral exploration activity over the past decade, lower discovery rates, deeper deposits, lower commodity prices and increasing costs in doing business.

Existing mines were also coming to the end of their lives, with the result that government revenue streams would continue to reduce unless those mines were quickly replaced.

Amec highlighted a number of public policy issues that required attention, including maintaining the status quo on the royalty regime, exempting mineral exploration tenements from local government authority rates, exempting stamp duty on mineral exploration tenement transfers, reviewing port authority fee structures, transitioning the abolition of payroll tax and transfer duties, the reform of Aboriginal heritage, reducing approval timeframes, retaining the pro-uranium exploration and mining policy and streamlining approvals.

“We look forward to working closely with all parties over the coming months to ensure that they are fully aware of the significant economic and job creating benefits which are achievable through adoption of these recommendations,” said Bennison.