The minerals boom and Australia’s ‘resource curse’
The minerals boom and Australia’s ‘resource curse’ Journal Article
Journal of Australian Political Economy
- Author(s): Goodman, J., Worth, D.
- Published: 2008
- Volume: 61
Abstract: Resource wealth in Australia is often presented as an asset, waiting to be exploited. Reflecting this, the recent resource boom is unquestioned - indeed celebrated - as a great windfall for the Australian people. There is a broad-based assumption that Australia s resource-based economy successfully diversified in the later twentieth century, while retaining a foundation in agricultural exports, and latterly minerals. As the saying goes, the country rode to prosperity on a sheep's back , and then on the back of the mining sector. The recent resources boom may be seen as simply the latest phase in that process, pump-priming the country s twenty-first century information-age service economy.