No insight into Australian management, but having lots of valuable dirt to dig up does make it much harder to get going in other lines of business. I think thi

No insight into Australian management, but having lots of valuable dirt to dig up does make it much harder to get going in other lines of business. I think this is called "dutch disease" by economists: the high wages paid by the dirt-digging (early on) mean that you can't simultaneously be competitive in metal-bashing, which makes it hard to develop other industries.