With international competition in the resources sector becoming more aggressive, senior mining executives have warned Australia must get its policy settings right to remain an attractive destination for investment.
Argentina, Canada, Chile and the US are among nations making "massive" changes to bolster their resource sectors, BHP's Western Australian iron ore asset president Tim Day says.
"Australia has put a lot of thought into its future," he told a Perth business lunch on Thursday.
"We've got to make sure the policy settings that are going through are going to be conducive of investment and competing.
"If we're not careful, we put Australia in a position where it doesn't compete."
Mr Day said while the demand for resources would remain strong into the future, the Albanese government "needs to understand that this is getting much more complex very fast".
"You've got a lot of really good opportunity here in Australia but we got a lot of headwinds and the globe is really competing hard," he said.
Rio Tinto's port rail and core services managing director Richard Cohen said industrial relations was one of the challenges the mining giant was tackling in Australia.
"You do need to remove the roadblocks and you need to make us competitive," he said, adding the company wanted "effective and efficient" federal policies.
Asked about the growing union membership at Pilbara mine sites, Mr Day raised concerns about Australia's industrial relation laws and said they risked driving costs up.
"We've got to be really thoughtful about that as a country otherwise we end up in this position where you start to then lose investment longer term," he said.
"You won't see it today ... but you will see it in five, 10 to 20 years time and that alters how that is the entire economy will play out."
Northern Star Resources chief executive Stuart Tonkin asked why Australia needed unions.
"No one's salary has come down," he said.
"They just go up and up and up.
"We're scaring people off from supporting the industry in Australia, not just to work in it, but just to just to believe in it, and we're scaring the money away."
Mr Day said the challenges facing the resources sector meant Australia must be "on the front foot".
"There's huge potential here ... We're very, very good at mining ... We've got really good resources. We have great people. We've got excellent techniques," he said.
"Let's get going... There's so much more that can be done here."
