ken henry talking sense, page-38

I will caveat that comment re the US by adding that I am only looking at resource companies and we have major holdings in Nevada based gold projects - due to the quality of the projects, but also because of the low cost operating environment. Despite Obama reversing some of the Bush reforms, permitting has actually got better in the USA in the last ten years and it is pretty simple to get a mine into production there. I also like the fact that we arent dealing with an economy with wage distortions like Australia where the gas projects have skewed all mine workers wages upwards to a crazy level. You can drill for 2/3rds the cost of Australia and feasibility studies are quite reasonable compared to Perth quotes. Steel is half the price. The US has problems, sure, but it is a good place to do business.