After launching the government’s $A100 million Exploration Development Incentive, Macfarlane told MiningNews.net on the sidelines of the conference that while that figure was “a rather arbitrary calculation” in terms of how much money was needed, he was sure it would create many times that worth of exploration to find the deposits of tomorrow.

He said while the figure was modest compared to the billions that the previous Labor federal government was “spraying around – I think $100 million was quite generous to be quite honest. It obviously would incentivise many times that number in terms of the exploration it causes”

The scheme will be reviewed in 2016.

“You’ve seen our position on the car industry; and really that wasn’t an industry we saw as being viable in terms of the government continuing to put in literally billions of dollars,” Macfarlane said.

“So our view on the resources – and particularly the exploration – industry is completely the opposite. It’s a crucial industry, it’s a precursor to investment and jobs and it’s important that we give it a boost along because it is suffering a bit of a downtrend at the moment.

“There are very few grant schemes in general in the federal budget – I happen to have three, of which this is obviously the important one for the resources industry. That highlights the importance we’ve placed on this industry.”

In his address, he said that resources-rich Australia faced a dilemma.

“We’ve reached a position where we’ve capitalised on much of our easily discoverable, near-surface resources and most of our major discoveries were made nearly 20 years ago, and to sustain the sector’s economic contribution over the medium to long term, we obviously need additional investment in exploration,” he told delegates.

“The average cost per metre drilled has doubled since the late 1990s; and the complications in relation to the environmental approvals to do that work have also increased exponentially.

“In the not too distant future, the final formalisation of the one stop shops will be in place so you only have to go to your state government, who we’ve given authority to do our part of the process – and you’ll only have to go through that once.”

The problem that the “one stop shop” addresses, however, is far greater than that.

He said the declining greenfields exploration was exacerbated by the fact that “we had only explored Australia on a reconnaissance level, and large areas of more remote, very frontier provinces remained underexplored”

“We have every reason to believe that these undercover areas will be resource rich, but exploring their potential is easier said than done,” he said.