PNG learning not to count all its LNG chickens before they hatch
By ROWAN CALLICK There's a common view around, even in Australia where after all these years people really should know better, that mining is merely about digging stuff up and shipping it to eager buyers. Those who think this may well also believe that “attracting” miners is a redundancy: that there's a load of mining money around, and the trick is to choose the best, fight off the rest, and then regulate them sufficiently to make sure they don't utterly destroy the environment, and take off without having paid any taxes. Our closest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, offers a good insight as to how difficult it can be to build and maintain a mining industry, and how relatively easy it can be to lose one. Independent PNG, like Australia today, has been substantially built on its resources industry. About 80 per cent of its export earnings comes from resources -- chiefly, until liquefied natural gas kicks in in a couple of years, from minerals. The big persisting dangers for PNG i