The 2025–26 Western Australian State Budget has been widely promoted as a win for the resources sector. At the centre of this narrative is the Government’s decision to double the funding for the Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS), lifting its annual allocation from $9 million to $18 million. It’s a headline that plays well: direct support for mineral discovery, particularly in a global investment climate that has become cautious and risk-averse.
But as encouraging as the EIS increase sounds, it misses a deeper and more structural issue. For the junior explorers who are responsible for most of the state’s greenfields exploration—the very companies most likely to discover the next generation of mines—funding is only part of the problem. The real bottleneck is bureaucracy. These small teams already operate with lean budgets and tight margins. What they struggle with most is not a lack of initiative, but a regulatory environment that slows them down, adds cost, and erodes their ability to operate effectively.
There’s no doubt that the EIS has been a successful program. Its return-on-investment metrics speak for themselves, with every $1 million in funding delivering over $31 million in economic benefit to Western Australia. It has unlocked frontier areas, supported early drilling campaigns, and contributed to meaningful discoveries. But the program is highly competitive and only a small proportion of explorers ever see a dollar of it. For the majority, the grind of gaining approvals, complying with complex regulations, and navigating inconsistent or unclear processes remains the most time-consuming and expensive part of their work.
Despite the Budget including an additional $9 million to build capacity within the EPA and DWER, approvals processes remain opaque and frustrating. Junior companies report delays in obtaining tenure, waiting months for program of work approvals, and managing a heavy compliance burden even for low-impact activities. The layering of responsibilities between State and Commonwealth regulators adds further complexity, particularly where heritage and environmental approvals overlap. It’s a system that feels as though it was designed for a different scale of operator—one with the legal teams, consultants and capital to manage it. That’s not the reality for most greenfields explorers.
In this light, the Budget’s headline investment in the EIS risks being more symbolic than strategic. It provides an easy political win—a program that can be praised for its economic impact without having to address the messier business of structural reform. But viewed against the broader fiscal picture, the $18 million allocated to the EIS is minor. The Government is forecasting $9.94 billion in royalties from WA’s commodities this year, alongside a $38 billion infrastructure investment program. The EIS is a drop in the ocean.
Meanwhile, a less-discussed but more pressing issue looms: debt. Although the State is projecting an operating surplus in 2025, WA’s net debt is on the rise. It’s expected to climb from $28.6 billion in 2023–24 to $40.9 billion by 2028. This growing debt poses a long-term risk to the State’s ability to respond flexibly to economic shifts, particularly if commodity prices retreat or royalties fall short of forecasts. What looks manageable today may become a drag tomorrow—especially if growth slows and interest payments begin to compete with strategic investment and reform funding.
The deeper concern is that, under the weight of rising debt and institutional inertia, the necessary reforms to streamline exploration approvals and reduce red tape will once again be put in the “too hard” basket. Yet these are precisely the reforms the industry needs. A genuinely supportive policy environment for junior explorers would include fast-track pathways for low-impact projects, tiered compliance systems, published timelines for decisions, and integrated approval processes across agencies. It would also foster a regulatory culture that partners with industry rather than polices it at arm’s length.
To be clear, direct investment in exploration is valuable—and the EIS deserves its place in the policy mix. But it cannot substitute for a system that enables explorers to get on the ground and do the work without needless delay. Until that system exists, the full potential of Western Australia’s mineral endowment will remain underdeveloped—not because of lack of funding, but because of lack of vision and will to reform.
The WA Government’s intentions may be genuine, but good intentions alone won’t dig the next mine. The junior exploration sector needs more than applause. It needs an environment where its risk is respected, its time is not wasted, and its discoveries are not hindered by bureaucracy masquerading as due process. With debt growing and patience wearing thin, the question remains: will we invest not just in what’s easy to fund, but in what’s hard to fix?
