Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee is in a unique position of running a major lobby group as a long-time former Liberal Party staffer in a Labor state.
Neptune Palace, the Malaysian-Chinese diner at Sydney’s Circular Quay, has been a lunch favourite for a generation. It was among alast year, just as it was in 2004, when Rear Window reported that Macquarie bankers had descended on the restaurant to celebrate their bonuses.has been two of those things. The chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council says his colleagues would be seriously bemused if he decided lunch with theshould take place at a sushi counter where we’d drink green tea.
Labor, under Premier Chris Minns, has been “very professional”, he says, adding that he doesn’t want to give the government “too much praise, because the activists will ring them up and say they are being too nice to the Minerals Council”. “They were run by a very dry bunch of students who were completely committed to their cause, and I sort of felt sorry for them, and I went over and got involved almost immediately,” he says of his first weeks on campus.
It was the start of a long career in staffing. In fact, Galilee says, he had written a university thesis on the role and influence of staffers – partly, he now admits, to make some contacts and land a job.He interviewed several NSW ministers, and a few federal shadow ministers, asking them how important they thought their staff were to their success. Then he asked the same set of questions to the staff to see whether there was a difference in perception.
After Howard lost government, Galilee went to work in NSW for several Liberal leaders – Peter Debnam, John Brogden and Barry O’Farrell. Eventually, he ended up in the office of then treasurer Baird, who later became leader.“I had spent several years as chief of staff to the federal resources minister, so I felt an affinity,” he says of the offer.
The government can’t just create new industries. It’s really about not shutting operations down before they need to.“It’s what happens for coal projects, but until recently, metals projects weren’t viewed as controversial,” he says. “The same thing is going to happen for critical minerals. Politicians like to talk about critical minerals, and we need stuff, nickel and cobalt.
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