Here we go again. Just as WA is starting to look up, the State is apparently facing another skills shortage.

You would like to believe industry, higher education and government are prepared this time around after the last boom and bust, but don’t bet on it.

Australian mining, in particular, has shown a worrying incapacity to harness its considerable influence and financial power to plan through commodity cycles.

Long-term planning gets plenty of discussion in this country, but all too often there isn’t the will power, the policy support or the allocated resources to carry it through.

Mining is a cyclical industry. The sector talks about recovery in the down times of the cycle, but doesn’t do enough to prepare for the uplift.

So there has to be some irony in mining now expressing concern about a looming skills shortage potentially threatening its recovery.

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Any shortage it is facing is at least partly self-inflicted.

After all, it was top-end mining, abetted by the likes of Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project, which hoovered up workers on inflated wages during the last shortage to service a wave of iron ore projects in the Pilbara.

The recruitment blitz was augmented by increased migration and left industries which had actually invested in apprenticeships and training struggling to fill vacancies.

And when the resources construction phase wound down and commodity prices fell, the miners couldn’t get workers out the door quick enough. Thousands of jobs were axed to protect profits.

The cuts extended through the industry, with smaller miners and exploration companies slashing exploration staff and idling drilling rigs to preserve funds.

It was a savage resizing which gave little thought to its future needs, forcing skilled labour back east and deterring high school graduates from studying mining professions.

Australian mining, in particular, has shown a worrying incapacity to harness its considerable influence and financial power to plan through commodity cycles.

Between 2012 and 2015, the number of students beginning bachelor degrees in mining engineering plunged more than 75 per cent. Commencements in geology fell 60 per cent.

Fast forward, and despite various working groups, industry collaborations and summits, mining is seemingly still having the same conversations it was having 10 years ago about the skills and education needed to sustain its industry.

If an admitted starting point long ago was selling the industry to schoolkids with the objective of getting them into mining professions, why is that the industry is still complaining today about the lack of awareness of mining among young Australians?

It suggests that whatever it has been doing over the past decade isn’t working.