Speaking at a business lunch in Melbourne hosted by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, BHP's Mike Henry revealed that the Big Australian had a seriously big power bill, with the miner spending more than $1.6 billion a year on "energy inputs" on its Australian operations.

The nation's energy challenges were "a seriously big deal, for everyone, including for the likes of the resources industry and for manufacturing", he told an audience of hundreds of people.

"BHP purchases about $1.6 billion per year in terms of energy inputs into its operations here in Australia. Of that, about $300-350 million is for east coast electricity," he said.

"With prices having doubled in some instances on the east coast over the past 12 months, or 12-24 months, that's a pretty big cost impost," he said.

Mr Henry also highlighted the risk that a sudden, unexpected loss of power supply could pose to a business.

"Trust me, a smelter full of molten metal suddenly losing power for an extended period of time is no good thing. Unexpected power disruptions have the potential to cause significant damage to our infrastructure. And if that occurs we lose production, we lose revenue, and of course there's lots more investment that needs to occur to get operations back up to scratch," he said.

Last year BHP's giant Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine in South Australia was hit by the statewide South Australian power outage. When the miner released its results in August it revealed that the "statewide power outage and resultant shutdown at Olympic Dam" reduced earnings before interest, tax and amortisation (EBITDA) in its copper division by $US105 million.

Olympic Dam was one of a number of large businesses in South Australia left without power for almost a fortnight after electricity transmission towers fell to the ground during a storm.

Mr Henry has become the latest in a long line of Australian corporate heavyweights to express serious concern about Australian energy prices and, or, reliability.

The CEO of miner Rio Tinto, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, used a speech at Parliament House in Canberra earlier this month to vent over energy prices.

"In the space of a decade, Australia has gone from having some of the most competitively priced energy in the developed world to having nearly the most expensive," he said.

"An energy-rich country like Australia should have affordable, secure and flexible supply. The future of many operations - mining, manufacturing, agriculture - and businesses large and small are at risk. The lessons of the past decade would suggest less state-based intervention and more national co-ordination. Too many states going in too many directions on their own targets, on their own gas access arrangements, have been too much of a national 'own goal'," Mr Jacques said at the time.

In Mr Henry's wide-ranging speech he also called for tax reform, and a "more effective focus and investment in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] skills at all education levels".

On tax, Mr Henry called for a cut in Australia's company tax rate, and warned that the current rate was a barrier to investment.

"Australia's company tax rate of 30 per cent is much higher than the OECD average. In fact there's only a few countries that have a company tax rate that's higher.

"And at the end of the day capital is global in nature and it will flow to where the most attractive opportunities exist. Australia needs to guard against the risk that it gets gradually priced out of the market through falling behind those countries that are becoming even more attractive for investment, through re-basing their company tax rate," he said.

Last month the Big Australian reported a full year, underlying profit for fiscal 2017 of $US6.73 billion ($8.5 billion).