Clough chief calls for tax breaks to miners that invest in local skills THE head of listed engineering firm Clough has called on the federal government to provide tax breaks for resource companies that invest in high-end local skills, warning that Australia is facing a critical shortage of engineers needed to sustain the boom. Kevin Gallagher, a former senior executive at Woodside Petroleum, told a business function in Perth yesterday that Australia had become a high-cost, low-productivity region and local contractors were being left to do the lower-skilled work on big projects.