It was standing room only at a recent Melbourne Mining Club event at Lord's Cricket Club in London, with people scrambling to get a seat, yet Victoria ranked lower than NSW for red tape in last year's RESOURCESTOCKS World Risk Survey and last out of Aussie states and territories in the Fraser Institute's version last year.

It's about time the local perception changed. Enter the International Mining and Resources Conference, which will show, among other things, that the "prophet" analogy is not far off the mark.

Melbourne was at the forefront of figuring out flotation technology to process zinc from the Broken Hill discovery that continued the nation's - and the world's - interest in Victoria as a mining hub and also helped build the behemoth we know today as BHP Billiton.



Today, history is repeating itself. Just as Melbourne was a centre for metallurgy in Broken Hill's early days, so too now are Victoria's rocks guiding its own Geological Survey and Geoscience Australia to unlock new exploration frontiers for not just the state but the whole eastern seaboard.

Victoria has also not lost its focus as the centre for the Australian mining industry's service sector, and is also the nation's wealth management hub. The problem is, Victoria's impressive skills base is not widely recognised locally.

Yet with miners across the market capitalisation spectrum suffering from a capital market which rivals the GFC for confidence levels, the Victorian government sees IMARC as the perfect opportunity to showcase its wares locally and internationally to assist mining and exploration development across Australia and abroad.

Little wonder, then, that former Reserve Bank of Australia board member and Business Council of Australia president Hugh Morgan believed it was entirely fitting that Victoria's government, along with Aspermont, AusIMM, the Minerals Council of Australia and Austmine, were hosting IMARC at this time, importantly incorporating the successful Mines and Money franchise.

"Victoria has some significant mining operations, but importantly it's also a great service centre, which gets less recognition than many other states," Morgan told Resourcestocks in a recent interview.

"The government is correct to seek to roadshow its great assets with IMARC in terms of wealth management; its universities, which deal with some of the best technologies used within industry; and its high technology software programs.

"With the diminution of its participation in the car industry, Victoria has an additional need to focus on every opportunity to promote employment.



"It's clear that it has an excellent position in agriculture, its mining service sector and its high technology [sector], but mining's recognition has not been there."

He said IMARC was not only a major international promotion, but a "wake-up call" domestically within the state and across Australia to demonstrate the excitement in Victoria's own prospects.