Governments interested in the sustainability of their resource industries make public investments to provide basic geological data. That is, pre-competitive information, to stimulate the interest of mineral exploration companies and to entice them to invest in a given area. AMEC has long held the view that successive Commonwealth and state governments have consistently underrated the importance of obtaining and providing geoscientific data as a means of stimulating mineral investment and have relied too heavily on the mineral prospectivity of particular regions to attract those investments. Hence, in its submission to the Prosser inquiry into impediments to resources exploration, AMEC recommended that the Federal Government prepare a national strategy whereby Geoscience Australia and the states/territories, through their respective Geological Surveys, jointly produce basic geological data from prospective areas of Australia as a means of encouraging mineral investment. Geoscience Australia is the only agency which can effectively co-ordinate cross-jurisdictional work on a whole-of-Australia basis (including offshore areas). The "rocks don't stop" just because a state or territory boundary has been drawn on a map.
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