There are a number of myths about the level of innovation and the scale of technological advancement at the mine site level in Australia that still need to be changed, he said in a recent AusIMM lecture.

"Silicon chips are high-tech. Iron ore is considered low-tech," Finkel said.

"But the technology in a world-first intelligent mine is clearly far more advanced than the processes in your standard silicon chip factory.

"Good luck building an intelligent mine in a data black hole."

Finkel said the last federal budget showed the government understood the importance of data to the industry and had committed $225 million to satellite navigation, promising comprehensive position, navigation and timing data to an accuracy of 10cm across all of Australia, and 3cm in areas with mobile phone coverage.

"So clearly, people in government get it," he said.

"But in schools, in universities, in media outlets and in every corporate boardroom, we need to bust once and for all the myth that mining is dumb luck, not serious smarts."

Finkel said the perception should be that a miner was not just digging a hole, they were building high-tech capacity.

"Who invests in technology development in Australia?" he asked.

"Who hires programmers and data analysts and coders?

"A lot of the heavy lifting is done by mining and mining service companies."

Seeing Machines is a technology company that is thriving in Canberra. It uses eye tracking and facial recognition to monitor the concentration levels of drivers.

"It grew from a project in the robotics laboratory at the Australian National University and some of its earliest investors were mining companies, like BHP, which trialled the technology in the Pilbara and then rolled it out across the fleet," Finkel said.

"Today the company employs more than 200 people and sells its products in Europe, North America, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.

"They could not have grown to scale without the big companies, including the big miners, who both invested in the technology and gave the products a test-bed."

Another myth that bothers Finkel is the belief that Australia cannot do anything genuinely innovative because there was not enough scale.

"But in mining we do have scale - and global supply chains," he said.

"The big miners and the start-ups work together.

"The start-ups gain access to global markets, and they grow."

Finkel said their success strengthened the argument for further investment in Australia from the big global players in turn.