House Chairperson, let me start off by commending the portfolio committee for holding this colloquium on beneficiation. Although much of the material that was presented by the various stakeholders was probably known to us before, I think it was a very useful occasion for us to exchange views. I commend the report, which I think is valuable, and I urge members to read the report in some detail.
I want to just come in on the apparent consensus and then on the differences which we have in that report.
One of the things is this. Perhaps I've been around the block long enough to remember that when some of us were talking about the works of people like Ha-Joon Chang, heterodox economists, the response we had from that side of the House was generally: "Hey! Hey! Hey! Anathema! These are weirdos. We shouldn't be going there." I think what has actually happened over this time is that now we are hearing that they are talking about Ha- Joon Chang, and everybody is quoting Ha-Joon Chang.
It appears to me that we have consensus on the fact that we do need to move up the value chain; that we do need to industrialise our country; and that we do need to diversify our economy. That is the way that we are going to have to go. We are going to have to make those structural changes. That appears to be the consensus.
Now, I think a charitable reading of this is that we've actually won the argument - the argument that we put forward in 2009, which was not accepted on this side of the House, has now won. [Interjections.]
I think that the less charitable reading of where we are at is actually that there is a fair amount of opportunism at play, and when the Industrial Policy Action Plan has begun to develop some traction and deliver some real results, then this side of the House does not know how much of it it wants to try to take over and own itself, and where it wants to differentiate itself from us and the Ipap. I think that is the dilemma they are in. [Interjections.]
So today we have had a big contrast between the two reports. The first report on industrial policy spoke about a number of constraints, and I think the hon Koornhof explained it. We don't disagree that the infrastructure issues - the availability of infrastructure and the pricing of the infrastructure, with electricity as the hard issue - are a fundamental challenge that we have got to overcome if we are going to create industrial development. Nobody disagrees with that. That is common cause. [Interjections.] That is common cause. We agree with that. That is why this government has a strong focus on energy and electricity generation, and the pricing policy of that has got to be supported ... [Interjections.] ...