Who made the decisions on resources, energy, water, farming and industry that shaped what Australians pay, and on whose advice? On Whose Advice is a year-long series that follows the signatures back to the file. Week one sets out the method, the eras and the scorecard.
On 18 April 1938 the Lyons Government banned the export of Australian iron ore.
The strategic reason was Japan. Japan was at war in China, and a British-registered company held a lease at Yampi Sound in Western Australia with a plan to ship a million tons a year to its Japanese parent. The economic reason came from inside government. The Commonwealth's Geological Adviser, W.G. Woolnough, reported that year that Australia would run out of accessible high-grade ore in little more than a generation unless it conserved what it had. Two years later, after a survey with the states, he put the ceiling at about 350 million tons.
The war ended in 1945. The ban did not.
Historian David Lee records that BHP, then the country's only steelmaker, was still advising the Menzies Government against lifting it in 1960. What finally moved it was a change of advice inside government. By late 1959 the Department of National Development and its Bureau of Mineral Resources supported a cautious relaxation. Cabinet agreed to a partial lift on 24 November 1960. The first export licence was issued on 1 December 1960. The last Commonwealth embargo was rescinded on 17 May 1966.
The National Museum of Australia says Australia shipped 500 tons of iron ore overseas in 1960. The Department of Industry now forecasts iron ore export earnings of $123 billion for 2025-26.
So here is one decision, made for a real wartime reason, on an estimate that turned out to be badly wrong about the ground. It held for fifteen years after its strategic reason was gone. An official's advice set it, and officials' revised advice ended it. That is the shape of every week in this series.
Over the decades, which politicians and senior officials made the laws, policies and decisions that left average Australians worse off on resources, energy, water, farming, mining, manufacturing and technology?
A lot of people believe the answer is obvious. Australians sit on some of the richest ground on earth and don't feel it at the bowser, on the power bill or in the rent. I am treating that as a hypothesis to test, not a conclusion to decorate. Some weeks the record will back it. Some weeks it won't, and I will say so plainly.
Under Our Feet, which runs on Thursdays, follows resources by theme: critical minerals, fuel, gas. Credentials vs Delivery, on Mondays, scores today's office-holders against today's official data. This series is organised by people and decisions, from Federation onward. Each week picks one decision, or one person's run of decisions, and follows it from the Cabinet room to the kitchen table.
People here means public office-holders acting in their official roles: prime ministers, premiers, ministers and the permanent bureaucracy. Ministers come and go. Department secretaries, Treasury, the regulators and the advisory bodies often outlast the governments that take their advice. The Tariff Board, set up in 1921, became the Industries Assistance Commission on 1 January 1974. Its line runs through the Industry Commission to the Productivity Commission, created in 1998. Those bodies shaped Australian industry for a century. Woolnough's estimate is the warning: a single official's number set national policy for a generation. The officials who reversed it matter just as much.
Every decision gets a score out of ten across five tests, worth two points each. A higher score means worse for average Australians.
Every score carries its source and a confidence label. If I can't source a score, it stays blank rather than guessed. Anything scoring three or less goes in a column marked "worked or mostly worked". Those weeks matter as much as the others. A series that only ever finds villains is not an investigation.
Five eras, from Federation on. Both sides of politics held office, federally or in the states, in every one of them.
Here is why the record has to decide, not my priors.
In 1949 the Chifley Government passed the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act. The scheme was finished in 1974 and it still generates power today.
In March 2017 the Turnbull Government announced Snowy 2.0 at about $2 billion. At the final investment decision in December 2018 the estimate was $5.9 billion. In August 2023 Snowy Hydro reset it to $12 billion, with all units in commercial operation by December 2028. In October 2025 Snowy Hydro announced a further cost review and signalled the figure would rise. As of this week no revised total has been published. The Australian National Audit Office has audited its delivery.
Same mountains, same water, two very different records so far. Snowy Hydro argues the storage is worth it, and that argument will get a full hearing when Snowy 2.0 gets its own week. The point now is simpler. Big public decisions can work, and they can blow out. Which one you get depends on who decided, what they were told and what they did with it.
Next Sunday, the iron ore ban in full: the 1938 Cabinet, Woolnough's numbers, the 1950s, who argued to keep it and who argued to lift it, scored on the five tests. At three, six, nine and twelve months I will stop and rank every decision so far by measured cost and name the patterns that keep coming back. By October 2027 the aim is a book.
If a decision has always bothered you, tell me which one, and who signed it. I will go and find the file.
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Rico Holt · ricoholt.com
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