Barnett’s iron ore absurdity exposed (again)

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Not that anyone needs another illustration of WA iron ore ineptitude, but WA premier Colin Barnett is giving us one, from The West Australian:

The State Government says it has started the formal process of acquiring land for the Anketell Port project in the Pilbara despite the depressed iron ore market.

Premier and State Development Minister Colin Barnett and Lands Minister Terry Redman said the land acquisition was vital to the development of the port about 30 kilometres east of Karratha, which they said was potentially the last major port to be built in the Pilbara.

“Last year, the Government signed a $20 million native title agreement with the Ngarluma people over 4300 hectares of land covering the planned Anketell site,” Mr Barnett said.

Fresh from abusing RIO and BHP for expanding their super cheap supply of iron ore to the market, Mr Barnett is here spending public money in pursuit of the castle-in-the-air West Pilbara project that would inject hundreds of millions of tonnes of high cost, low quality iron ore into the market.

It’s ridiculous.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.