whatever happened to 'without fear or favour'?, page-15

"It had nothing to do with which company mined the mineral, the government took it for granted and kept on spending like there was no tomorrow."

They were smart in that it seems their strategy involved local partnership and preference to local inputs.
Thinking about it I suppose Australians might see a benefit from the oil and mining companies through their super funds rather than being invested in a sovereign wealth fund as a country.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-deal-magazine/norway-shows-sovereignty-in-wealth-fund/story-e6frgabx-1226886257981#

As the Central Bank governor Oystein Olsen tells The Deal, the country was beset by problems similar to today’s European basket-cases. It suffered from high inflation, fiscal deficits and a banking crisis.

Norway learned the hard way. Norway’s strategy involved setting up a state-owned oil company, Statoil, in 1972, while the government also took a direct financial interest in oilfields through an entity now called Petoro.

Einar Risa, who worked in senior roles with Statoil from the late 1970s until the early 1990s, watched the company, and the country, learn how to profit from oil wealth. “When oil was discovered by Phillips, there was practically no petroleum expertise in Norway whatsoever,” he says.

In the early days, the government took a “passive” equity partnership in fields but it stipulated that foreign oil companies should accept seconded Statoil staff so they could learn about the complex industry. Concession awards gave Statoil and other Norwegian companies the option of gradually taking operating control of some of the fields, Risa explains.

Today, more than 50 per cent of North Sea oil production is in the hands of Statoil and Petoro.

While the Norwegian government did not have a strict local content policy, there was an “undeclared understanding” that companies would “not be preferred” if they failed to involve local industry, says former industry minister Trond Giske.

This contrasts with the situation in Australia, particularly during the latest phase of the resources boom when nearly all of the infrastructure for many big developments has been imported.