Warning: Complacency Western Australia Stage II cost era begins

Early in 2007, then again in April of 2008, we gave notice to anyone who cared enough, that WA has a culture lacking in preparedness for potentially disastrous crises. See our last [21 April commentary] on this site - Western Australia's biggest enemy? Complacency

Our message? - It doesn't have to be that way!

• The Apache gas plant explosion at Varanus Island last Tuesday and the ripple effect turning into a tidal wave of power reduction pain for state businesses and employment. ‘State of emergency...' shouted the headline in The West Australian. Some will not survive this event, because they have no contingency plan. Major cash rich players tend to fare best, but there are not guarantees, and their survival is not painless either. Cash is good, strong and tested contingency plans are better. Layoffs break continuity of efficiency that may prove elusive to re-establish, possibly years of rebuilding

• Like the grim reaper waiting in the wings, the coincidence of another big oil price hike - more a surge, on Friday last; the switch to diesel power generation will have a nasty broader impact that will show itself within days. WA's liquid fuel supply chain is already lengthy, product limited and vulnerable; and the refined middle distillate output for aviation fuel and diesel may generate hostility as competing business interests scramble for a priority that is not there. Having spent time on supply chain studies overseas we know that WA is extraordinarily vulnerable; but we also know it doesn't have to be that way

• Just to add colour and anxiety, we read reports in The West about investigators being hired to ‘spy' on spouses/partners where one is engaged in Fly-In Fly-Out mining work. The investigators allegedly spend time around the mines and in the home territory of the FIFO workers - trouble can start at either end. The article inferred that reports that prostitutes have been flying into and busily working mining areas from as far away as New Zealand have in part triggered this. Infidelity issues, nagging suspicion and the potentially serious violent outcome, cannot be a welcome message for the mining companies that rely upon FIFO systems to supply labour. It is after all, another supply chain. Could this be another disaster in the making? Certainly so for some marriages and partnerships; but don't underestimate what it might do to the employers as the fear factor begins to spread like a contagion. Bring all of the current economic factors together with this, the strains of absence may become just too much. But as we have said...it doesn't have to be that way. Contingency plans only work if they are developed from the bottom up as well as the top down. The well-being of employees and their families are part of the risk matrix

• One bright spark [‘Bystander' Tim Treadgold] wrote a column in The West suggesting that fuel costs may justify the development of mining towns to effectively replace FIFO. It's not going to happen, Tim. We understand the rationale; but we think the study is incomplete, and we start with the question -"How can a state with such a severely neglected and continuously stretched infrastructure hope to support a crop of new towns?" Try discussing healthcare and emergency services with anyone who knows anything about it in Western Australia, for starters - and see our next comment below

• The West did a good job this past weekend, covering a lot of important ground. ‘Victim had to charter a plane to get to hospital' was the headline of a report on the experience of Luke Neil, who was seriously injured in a Geraldton beach attack on Christmas Day and had to pay $1500 to get himself to a hospital in Perth. The Royal Flying Doctor Service was ‘too busy' to help him. Shocking isn't the word; and because we don't want to get into the infantile political correctness type of debate that bedevils society here as much as anywhere we will simply say - get used to it, this is what happens when the community is materialistically distracted. Accountability for preparedness does not come about by chance

We would not be making the kind of comment that you are reading here unless we confidently know there is a better way. But that is how we make a living - helping the people and organizations that have the smarts to know that governments are not the saviours of businesses and jobs threatened by crises; and the drive to look for new solutions, not the tired old traditional ‘meat, potatoes and two veg' plate rolled out by some pretenders.

For the individual though, we will close on a further warning that goes back to that most significant of dangers in Western Australia today - complacency. We do not believe that an end of the resources mining boom is what you should be concerned about.

There is going to be an earlier end, long before the last minerals are shipped out. The lucrative jobs, most especially those filled by people who have forsaken a good education to chase the dollar and buy that expensive personalized plate car, will disappear as automation takes hold. FIFO versus mining towns? Forget it. A shortage of highly qualified engineers and IT software expertise may slow the process but eventually the labour cost will - and justifiably - be defeated by the onward march of robotics.

After all the sacrifices, the strain and the pain, what is your plan? Look at what has happened to others - businesses and individuals who were not prepared, and remember our words. It doesn't have to be that way.

David Forbes

9 June 2008