Minister for Resources, the Hon Madeleine King MP: Critical Minerals and National Security

I too want to begin uh by acknowledging the traditional custodians on the land in which we gather here today, the Nanomal people. I pay my respects to their elders past uh present and accept that respect to all aiginal and toristrait islander peoples with us today. And I'm reminded I've seen some people in here from Geoscience Australia where I learned from them when first becoming minister uh that Australia's uh first nations people are these this nation's first miners, mappers, navigators and indeed scientists. So thanks uh to ANU and the National Security College for the invitation uh to speak here today. Uh thanks to AU Deputy Vice Chancellor Stuart Wife with us today and of course James from the National uh Security College for this opportunity. Uh I too want to acknowledge the distinguished guests from our diplomatic community, the many heads of missions here uh who have made time to be here this morning and I'm delighted to be among so many distinguished academics, policy leaders, security practitioners, government, industry and members of the diplomatic corps. Collectively, you all sit at the intersection of ideas, policy, and national purpose. And that makes you a vital part of this discussion. Our economic prosperity has been built on the back of our resources sector. Increasingly though, our rich endowment of natural resources is playing a vital role in our nation's security. So when we talk about critical minerals, we are not simply talking about resources. We are also talking about sovereign capabilities that will secure Australia's future. Australia's geology is our inheritance shaped by forces over millennia over over which we have no control and we never did. As James says, geology is not a strategy. But what we make of the inheritance is really up to us. In many respects, generations of Australia have made that choice and Australia is a dominant resources nation. We have a worldleading geoscience capability, a highly skilled workforce and a mining sector. Globally recognized as the best in the world. Through our resources sector, we make an outsized contribution to global manufacturing and in providing energy security to our region. The Albanesei government understands resources are central to Australia's national security and to the economic security of our region. The sustained period of peace and prosperity in our region that we have known for many years can be attributed in very large part to the steady, constant and reliable supply of Australian energy commodities, coal, gas, and uranium to our neighbors. But increasingly, it is the question of critical minerals that now sits at the center of strategic decision making. Critical minerals are key to defense systems, energy, communications, advanced technologies, and industrial capability. They help protect us. They help to keep the lights on to drive innovation and deliver economic gains. There is no future made in Australia without a strong domestic critical mineral sector. The challenge for critical minerals in rare earths lies in the markets and how they are structured and traded. Australia has an abundance of raw critical minerals and rare earths. But China over decades has built a substantial advantage in critical minerals midstream and downstream processing leading to outright dominance in the international market. Beginning in the 1960s and ramping up in the 1980s, those western countries with significant mineral processing capacity allowed that to atrophy. That was in large part because of the increasingly thin margins and growing environmental complexity and an unwillingness of governments to manage that complexity, choosing instead to outsource the whole enterprise to places where environmental concerns are often ignored. Whereas the United States and Europe were the center of gravity and rare earth processing in the 1960s. By the 1990s that capacity including expertise in mining, separation and refining all but ceased to exist in those jurisdictions. In quite contrast, China has for decades treated minerals processing as strategically imported industry and built that industry up to such an extraordinary scale that midstream and downstream supply chains are now wholly concentrated in that one country. The result has seen a strategically significant domination in the global supply of rare earths. And in recent years, we've seen a rapid increase in export controls, restrictions, and bans across the whole chain of critical minerals and rare earth production. This has emphasized the risk of concentrated supply of the products the world needs for our modern technology. The United States, Japan, and our European partners have recognized their exposure. They are actively seeking to build resilient supply chains that are less dependent on a single supplier and are looking to Australia as a key ally in that effort. This creates a challenge for Australia. We are supporting new supply chains, deepening international cooperation and playing a larger role in the diversification of those resources. At the same time, we're continuing to manage trade with our la largest trading partner. These are not conventional market conditions. But we have a responsibility to step up and lead on critical minerals and rare earths globally. And that's exactly what we are doing. Australia, a country of about 28 million people, has mobilized one of the largest financial support packages anywhere in the world with the sole purpose of reinvigorating critical minerals and rare earth processing capacity here at home. This 28 billion package ensures Australia is taking on its international leadership responsibilities. The scale of this taxpayer support is significant, but it is a funding package that meets the scale of the challenge, giving what we are asking projects here at home to confront to take on opaque markets shaped by concentrated market power and structural distortions. That is no easy challenge and no one country can do this alone. Just two weeks ago, the G7 leaders meeting in France signed a new declaration on cooperation on critical minerals mining production and the need to diversify supply chains. The G7 declaration hasn't received much coverage in Australia, but as the opening paragraph of the statement notes, Australia supports a declaration where G7 leaders committed to reducing dependency on a single supplier outside the G7 and partner countries. In 2025, Australia joined the initial G7 critical minerals production alliance established by Canada. We will continue to be a member of the expanded alliance under the latest declaration. This declaration is recognition of the work Australia has been doing with our partners including Japan, Canada, and the United States. The declaration is a direct result of Australia's global leadership in this area. It recognizes that today's critical minerals markets present unconventional problems that require unconventional responses. Australia's response has been to commit the nation to developing a critical minerals and rare earth industry that captures more value and builds sovereign capability and an enduring position as a world leader. If Australia is to capture more value, we need to move further down the value chain. The value and the leverage lie in the processing and refining and increasingly in the systems, data and technologies that sit around them. Ambitious Australian companies have recognized this and are attempting to broaden these concentrated supply chains. Uh for instance, Victory Metals has established a rare earth pilot processing facility in Perth as part of the development of the North Stanmore heavy rare earth projects and that's near Q uh in the Merchesen gold fields of Western Australia. The facility will play a critical role in demonstrating and optimizing rare earth processing helping to advance plans for future commercial production. And I was really glad to be able to visit that pilot facility recently. And that facility is itself a milestone that demonstrates Australia can move down the value chain and make important inroads into alleviating outright supply domination by one nation. Supply chains that were once optimized for efficiency are now being reshaped uh around resilience, trust, strategic alignment and geostrategic interests. We are now part of a broader reconfiguration of a a global trading order. A system that has been largely stable since it was created after the Second World War. Countries are making different choices about how they manage risk. This presents both an opportunity and a test for Australia. While we are well positioned at the front end of the supply chain, the next phase of the work we do with international partners will be defined by how effectively we drive the creation of a sustainable enduring alternative market for the world. And this work we will do and indeed are doing with our partners in the United States, Japan, Europe, and across the G7. We are more than simply a resource provider. We are an enduring strategic partner of choice and that's why we're working with the US on agreements to deliver strengthen secure and diversify critical minerals and rare earth supply chains. Last year the prime minister industry minister Tims and I met with the United States President uh Donald Trump and his cabinet to sign the landmark United States Australia framework for securing of supply and the mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths. One of the projects included in that deal is the gallium production facility at Alcoa's Wagerup aluminina refinery in Western Australia. And this project will support growing demand for the critical minerals necessary for semiconductors, advanced electronics, and defense applications. But it will also address the market disruption caused by the well-reported introduction by China of export controls on gallium in 2023. Gallium is a byproduct of bork site that we processed to aluminium. We have never had to make gallium before because it was freely available on international markets. That all changed when China put in place strict export controls on supplies. I'm enormously proud of the work of this government and that of our partners in Japan and the US who have all worked together diligently and with purpose since that trade ban to create new sovereign capability in the production of gallium. Production capacity is anticipated to be 100 tons peranom representing about 10% of global demand for that commodity. Australia's financing is being provided through export finance Australia under the critical minerals facility and delivers on the objectives of the critical mineral strategic reserve. Another important milestone in building this industry is the Arafura Nolan's rare earths project which was able to announce very recently that it is ready to commence construction near All Springs in the heart of our nation as a direct result of support through our critical minerals strategic reserve. All of this would not be possible of course without the strong leadership of united government with ministers working together in lock step in the national interest. And in this regard, I want to acknowledge the excellent stewardship of Australia's trade minister, Don Farrell. And it's also critical to recognize the exceptional work of the treasurer, Dr. Jim Charas, in relation to decisions facing the foreign investment review board. We have similar partnerships uh to the US framework with nations like Japan and Canada through multilateral forums like the quadritical minerals initiative. We're working with like-minded countries to build critical mineral supply chains for our shared economic and national security. In doing so, we'll be able to deliver outcomes we simply couldn't deliver on our own because resilience requires scale and scale requires diversification across global supply chains. This will require coordination on investment, shared standard standards and a willingness to work through the complexity of building industrial capability across jurisdictions. It's very difficult work that takes time and commitment and it requires trade-offs. But the alternative continued concentration and domination of supply chains by one producer presents a much greater risk to our national interests. The risks of economic coercion are real and Australia has experienced this directly. We are already seeing how disruptions in critical minerals supply can flow through to manufacturing, energy systems and defense capability. They constrain choice, increase costs and slow technological development. For countries like Australia, the challenge is to navigate this environment with clarity about where we can have the greatest impact. Part of that is in industrial policy. It's about where we and our partners choose to build capability and how we support it over time in the face of global competition and how we confront the challenge of unfair treatment charges that make us smelters globally uncompetitive. The other part is market creation because we don't have a viable, secure or transparent critical mark critical minerals market at present. We need to help shape the next generation of critical minerals markets and the trading systems that underpin them. That means understanding where the pressure points are, where new dependencies may emerge and where the next bottlenecks will sit and positioning Australia where we can add and draw down the most value. And this is where institutions like the National Security College play an important role because the challenges we are dealing with do not sit neatly within any one single discipline. They cut across economics, science, security, technology, and geopolitics. They require a level of integration between research, industry, and government that we have not always had to bring together in the past. If we get that right, Australia will be very well placed. As I have said, we have the resources, we have the talent, we have the technical capability, and we are a trusted partner in a global system that is placing increasing value on trust over cost. We need to be cleareyed about the limits of Australia and our partners. We will not out compete on every mineral or at every stage in the value chain, and we don't need to. Our task is to be deliberate about where we invest, where we partner, and how we position ourselves in a system that is increasingly contested. Ultimately, this is not just about resources. It is about how countries manage dependence and build resilience in a more uncertain world. Critical minerals and rare earths sit at the center of that challenge. And is a problem that grows with success as the markets get bigger. So does the demand on Australia and our ability to respond. It's a good problem to have, but a difficult problem to solve. As we look to solve problems like this and many others, it is institutions like the Australian National University and the National Security College and people like all of you here today who will remain crucial to our efforts. So thank you once again for the chance to be part of today's discussion. I'm looking forward to taking part and the panel that follows. Thank you so very much. >> Thank you. >> So, thank you so much, Minister. And I'd like now to invite our other panelists to take their seat. Come up. Uh this morning's panel is moderated by the National Security Colleges senior advisor and podcast host Sharon Parker. Sharon is a secundi from the department of defense with years of experience in intelligence, statecraftraft and emerging technologies. She's joined in conversation along with the minister with professor John Maravagenis, professor of economic geology at A&U, an internationally recognized expert on or deposits and rare earths. Professor Llewellyn Hughes, director of the A&U Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, drawing on his expertise in the political economy of lowcarbon transitions and the global clean energy supply chain. And finally, Dr. Hugh Mai, visiting fellow at the A&U Crawford School of Public Policy and former chief economist at BHP. Please help me in welcoming our panel. >> Thank you everyone. Uh ladies and gentlemen, you know, we've been told for a long time that Australia is the lucky country. Uh part of that is obviously what is in the ground. Can I ask first Professor John uh Maveraginus, you know, what is Australia's real strategic advantage in critical minerals? What do we have in the ground and what is its importance? >> Well, it turns out that >> Can you hear me? Yeah. It turns out that we have just about every critical mineral in in in some amount somewhere. Many of them are just byproducts as Meline just mentioned that for instance we've been throwing gallium away for 150 years and maybe it's about time we started collecting it. But the the advantage we have is that we have Mount Weld in Western Australia that Linus is mining now and which one of the biggest uh rare earth deposits in the world. one of only three that's supplying the world essentially with with rare earths at the moment and we have probably three four five other prospects that could be developed over the next decade and that's just in the rare earths there's antimony there's gallium there's germanmanium there's there's the whole periodic table here so it's it behooves us to take advantage of that geology and do something smart with it >> fantastic I think that's where we're actually heading um you know professor Llewellyn Hughes, we heard it here this morning uh from the minister, unconventional problems require unconventional solutions and and a lot of the demand around this is being driven by the energy transition. Uh you know what can you tell us about those capabilities and partnerships and and what they actually require? >> Thanks so much and thanks Minister uh for your remarks uh uh this morning. Um yeah so uh for those of you who uh have not had the opportunity to look at it I I commend to you the work of the international energy agency um in uh its analysis of uh future critical minerals uh demand. Um the energy transition really uh is already supercharging demand for a wide range of critical uh minerals. uh the numbers are pretty extraordinary. Uh in order to meet a net zero pathway, for example, you're really talking about a six-fold increase in aggregate demand across mineral types uh in in in volutric terms. Um it takes a long time to get a mine a mine up. So one point the first point I guess is that from a climate change perspective given our international commitments uh uh that um that you uh you know we need to hurry up and it provides a strong rationale for governments collectively to uh join together in order to enable that to happen. The second point uh you know as the minister alluded to was the problem of uh dependence and market power. Um regardless uh of you know who that actor might be that has market power um it's it's a really substantial problem in many of these markets. Um if you look at the oil industry for example you know a natural resource that we faced market power problems in for years in its absolute pomp uh OPEC uh you know controlled about 55% of global production of oil uh and here as we've heard uh the the dominance particularly in the midstream uh in refining uh although not only that that's not only the case right if you look at cobalt for example and the upstream uh problems lie in uh in in market dominance um the the the level of of market power uh is is far in excess of that. So whether you're talking uh about uh you know climate change um whether you're talking uh about uh the propensity or the possibility of economic coercion problems of market power there's a very strong rationale for um for uh for like-minded countries to get together and to intervene. I was really struck by the remarks I worked in DC for a number of years and you know when I was teaching there we spent our time in the mid2010s teaching about the Washington consensus right and you can really hear how we've moved substantially on from that consensus and are now talking about how we might collaborate uh we might come back to it but I think the emphasis of the minister on the need for international coordination collaboration is absolutely crucial >> well why don't why don't we just go straight to to that point, you know, partnerships and industrial policy and and how the region ally allied arrangements with Japan, etc. Azan or the Quad um you know, support sovereign capability strategy. Now, how do we avoid just recreating dependence? >> Yeah. So, uh, look, um, uh, it is such an extraordinary change, you know, sitting here and talking about industry policy because we kind of weren't allowed to do that for for for a for, um, you know, for quite a long time. Um, and I there are two aspects, I think. First is about um, aligning uh, internal capabilities within Australia, right? I mean, as the minister noted, this is a highly trans disciplinary issue in the research space. That means we're reaching from national security across economics uh you know uh uh earth sciences uh as well of course uh you know crucially that's also the case in terms of government ministries as well right and department so you've got trade you've got national security home affairs uh uh geoscience Australia and others as well so we kind of you know institution building was such an important and interesting framing I think um because it is so important domestically the second part of this is you know when we last thought about industry polic policy in the 70s um you know it was all about building everything at home and exporting final products but we live in a world of global value chains today and and so international collaboration and coordination is crucial. I think the agreement that was signed between Prime Minister Albanzi um uh and Prime Minister Takahichi from Japan recently was was a really terrific agreement because it had a governance overlay enabling international collaboration and also identified specific projects and and and you know so we can think about how to remove bottlenecks in those particular projects. So you know I I think there's you know terrific work that's been done and we are in a new world and we need to see more of that. Fantastic. Thank you. Look, I guess this takes us then uh and Dr. Hugh McCay to the idea of uh an enduring strategic partner of choice. Uh that could be considered a loaded question and certainly a geopolitical statement, but it's a really really important one to answer and address as we uh you know, as we sit here today. Um can you set the market reality for us and and talk through some of the issues that we collectively are going to face as we uh as we move this issue forward. >> Excellent. Now uh the way I want to shape this this conversation is not to think about individual markets but to talk about value chains uh as as a few already have. The way we got to this position is by the Wall Street mentality which has perated the West since the 1970s. We've salami sliced the value chain and we've put very very high performance standards in terms of profitability and return on capital on every slice. That is why we've abandoned the middle. Yes, environmental regulations might have had something to do with it a few decades ago, but right now it's all about slim returns on capital and capital drifting to the the dumbbells of the value chain. The end with the intellectual property downstream or the geological comparative advantage at the other end. The middle makes no money. Therefore, it doesn't attract any money. On the other side of the equation, we have a financially repressive regime in China running an economic security policy willing to bear losses, low returns on capital in segments of the value chain to prioritize other elements of the value chain. Willing to bear that loss in a vertically integrated operation because they're pursuing an economically secure economy in and of themselves. And that sort of feeds back on itself to a coercive uh approach to this particular this particular issue. So how do you deal with that? Well, first of all, you think about what are the sources of market power? What are the sources of competitive advantage? And where are the barriers to entry high and where are the barriers to entry low? And this is why the midstream opportunity is an opportunity. It's not just something we should talk about because the barriers to entry there, there are modest barriers to entry in terms of intellectual property and in terms of your ability to deploy the capital, but ultimately they're not something that is insurmountable with the benefit of time. Geological comparative advantage, you can't just magic that up. an intellectual property at the other end in manufacturing downstream that can be very difficult to crack. But in the middle where China's dominance is profound and going back a step in time, most of the investment in processing capacity has been in countries which are resource poor in their own right and it's their response to economic security in this value chain. They want to get some sense of control over the value so they go where the barriers to entry are lowest. The last time treatment and refining charges were this low globally was when Japan was building a lot of smelters in the late 1960s and they were doing it at a time when they had to bid up for all the concentrate. So that's my main sort of jumping off point. Where are the barriers to entry lower? They're lowest in the midstream. That's why everyone can participate if they choose to. You just need to make that decision to drop some returns on aggregate, have lower returns on capital, and you can then leverage your comparative advantage downstream if you're Australia. Sorry, upstream if you're Australia, downstream if you're the United States, your Taiwan, your Japan, your South Korea, uh your Germany, uh upstream for Chile. And I think it can work uh over the fullness of time. >> So, you know, I really want to pull the thread there just a little bit more because I think you've captured that in a really neat little statement. I think uh I would understand that problem uh having other issues. One of those is around coercion of the market and how other nations might actually respond to Australia's perspective and what it intends to actually do. Um, you know, how should how should we prepare for that and are there second and third order steps that we can prepare for to to make sure that we capture that early? >> Okay. So when you're targeting resilience, it's good to be very precise about what you mean by the term resilience rather than just throwing it out there as this nebulous term which means oh I did slightly less worse than I might have done which is often the common usage. >> Absolutely. >> Now what is resilience as an intertemporal concept? First of all it's your ability to absorb shocks in the short run. In the medium term, it's your ability to adapt. In the long run, it's your ability to transform. And that's really what like-minded countries are talking about. They're talking about transformation. And transformation requires dramatic interventions when the direction of travel is not what you want. But before we get there, we have to improve our ability to absorb, which brings me to coercion. And some of the tools that we have at our disposal there, the Australian government has put some of those tools in place. They're not necessarily strong enough yet. Things like the critical minerals reserve is early days. that's nent but that can be a very very flexible tool when you can think about your ability to absorb your ability to adapt uh where I'd love to see more focus uh like the ORAI project that Riotinto is sponsoring bringing highquality uh researchers around the world together on a topic like substitution substitution recycling these are areas which can help you adapt and an embed medium-term uh options. But then to transform in the long run, you need to redesign your system on a full spectrum basis to be more effective in all of these areas. And as the minister has said, different segments of that value chain, different like-minded countries are in a better position to attack them. And that needs a collective strategy more so than an individual nationbased strategy because of the different places those competitive advantages are distributed. >> Yeah, I like the reference to uh you know a non-individual answer there. I guess my next question then comes back to you John. uh you know the deposit to capability gap which I think we see um what does it take to close the gap and how long is it realistically going to take us to get to where Hugh thinks we should be >> well one of the obvious barriers we faced is in processing extraction separating the rare earths this has been something our government struggled with for a decade their initial thoughts were to put a lot of money into one company to build a facility in Western Australia which many of us were critical of but I'd like to congratulate the government on recently putting money into ANSTOW, a government organization that's had the capability to do this for decades. In fact, they were world leaders in this and so expanding that has been a really smart move and I congratulate you Meline on that. I think that was really great because we've been there and that that's a great organization. So what we need is is more of that midstream that Hugh was talking about that we've got the mineral deposits. We have to get them started mining and then we have to get that stuff and we have to process it here rather than ship it overseas to process it so that we can get more of the value in the stream before we send it overseas. >> So can I ask a >> can I ask a uh a synthesis question of you Minister King? You know, you've heard the three vantage points. Obviously, there are um some deep, broad, and and wide interests there. You're the person that has has spoken about scale and jurisdiction. And then the requirement to target or or to understand value is trust over cost. Um there there are going to be costs here. How do you um how do you respond to to all of the statements that have been made today? and uh and how does the the lay person in Australia then focus on critical minerals as something they should know about. >> Um a lot has been said so I'm not sure I can synthesize them but I but I would say I agree with every one of the panelists there some really uh thoughtful comments uh um as to to valuing trust over cost. It goes to that u market uh piece that that Hugh spoke about about uh and and I mentioned it in my remarks. Uh we used to oh we still do in global trade. We always value efficiency uh and cost over sometimes other things. We've done that for some time. Uh I I do think uh there was the challenge around confronting changing community expectations around the environment. And I agree it's not the only reason why uh many western countries sort of chose to outsource. It just became a bit too tough. Uh Australia's always mined and and we've had to because and that's saying the traditional commodities uh that is the basis of of our economy and there's there's no ifs or buts about that. That's just a fact. So we've always had to deal with the environmental challenges and deal with changes uh and responsibly deal with changes in community expectations. And that's a really good thing that we've got to a good place as well as dealing with other uh changes in uh for instance uh paying a great deal more regard and respect for traditional owners uh through through native title on on mining uh and so forth. So uh but then coupled with how a changing market uh became and is now uh entirely opaque uh around critical minerals and rare earths. And if I can uh one of the examples I mentioned was was the gallium uh project uh in uh wager up in WA. And quite literally no one would be doing this if if we were able to still get that commodity at a reasonable price easily. uh we wouldn't be necessarily driven to do it but it is an example that follows the Lionus example the rare earth's uh example that John mentioned uh that I mean that facil the the the mine itself uh is progressing the the refinery that they've built now in Calguli uh is progressing really because of a ban of rare earths to China and I think it was 2012 that led Japan to decide well we can't have that kind of uh future export control hanging over our head all the time for the things we need to make and we want to make technologies whether it be uh for the transition or for defense applications or just modern technology. So we will invest in this project and that's why that project's happening and that's their strategic reserve in rare earth so to speak. Uh gallium's similar uh in that we didn't have to make it, but someone stopped selling it, so we got to make it. And when we can make it, like John said, we can absolutely do it. It's a minimal cost in the midstream as an add-on to something we already do a lot of. But we do have to diversify all those projects. I think John mentioned your references to the Enyaba project, the the Aluca project, and a lot of that is around the actual stockpile that was there. That was a lot of the value and and the reason a government before us and and we followed it as well had to invest. But making sure there's like an arc of uh capacities across the country is really important and investing in that IP uh and that new knowhow through the likes of of of ANSTO and and uh the CRC that that works on this as well is is also vitally important. that >> excuse me as I struggle with the technology. Uh you know I guess the the final question might actually land on how government then sustains this strategy you know as one of many strategies that it is working toward achieving across electoral and commodity price cycles and things like that. These are the the dayto-day responses that you know we'll all have to deal with. um you know and and I guess I open that to the floor as well. >> Do you want me to start? I'll just start. I didn't ask that last. Why should people care about critical minerals as well? Um uh so I'll go to the sustainment piece is important. Uh this is taxpay money that that we put out through the critical minerals facility. uh the strategic reserve, the northern Australia infrastructure facility and uh other works through export finance Australia and that's important to remember and we always remember as a government that's why these these are all repayable facilities but also it's not just Australia and I said that we can't do this on our own and so making it a sustainable and enduring response and building an extra an additional alternative market we we need our friends and our friends need us uh and we are uh making the most of long-term relationships in energy security particularly with uh Japan but also the Republic of Korea and others. Uh we want them to invest in our critical mineral strategic reserve. Uh that isn't enough to do what we want to do. Uh we we will work with our friends in the United States. Uh they've announced Project Vault. We've got our strategic reserve up much quicker than they'll ever get Project Vault up. even though that's got more uh funding into it. So uh we want them to to join with us uh in investing in well our comparative advantage for us as Australia and Australians but that all goes into uh making sure there is diversified supply chains uh for other parts of the globe. Why should everyday uh people care about critical minerals and rare earths? Well, it's because it's in everything. uh and we kind of didn't either appreciate this and but so are all minerals by the way but uh also the these things are are just uh integral to modern life now uh and we should want to make the most of our geology which uh provides them through manufacturing and for everyday people it's it's jobs it's a lot of jobs in this industry as well I'll leave it at Hugh >> I think that there's a there's a really important task to increase the uh the public profile or the excitement around the industry so we can build the next generation of people are going to work in this industry. And that's why uh when we talk about economic security, we cannot miss the energy transition because if you survey your average 22-year-old uh the energy transition is a much more motivating and galvanizing force than his economic security. We have to make that link so that we have a group of people who want to study geology, want to study metallurgy in particular and this is an industry they want to be involved in uh for private reasons commercially and also for patriotic reasons in the national interest. And if we don't have that generation of talent coming through, we will be very dependent on imported skills and we'll have to be able to track the foreign investment. Now just adding on to this again though there is a there's a difficulty politically around this and I go back to the 1950s and when the US induced more than 50 new copper mines in response to a national interest call to increase the security of copper supply. That report said very very clearly we know that these mines are marginal and they would not be commercially successful. But what happens if you induce minds that aren't commercially successful and they become a money pit? And that's a real problem uh in a democracy cuz to make a real difference to aggregate supply you have to induce mines that wouldn't be financed commercially. You can accelerate ones which can't get going countery, but ultimately you need some non-economic mines to be digging the dirt and you need some non-economic smelters to be processing it into metal and you need some non-economic chemicals uh facilities which are turning it into a useful chemical. And so you are bearing losses and these losses could endure for a very very long time and the case needs to be made well in advance before you choose uh that particular path. I I like the uh you know the analogy you've used I guess with the you know a global hedgeimon uh when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail and you can afford to actually uh you know conduct a a form of overreach uh by creating too much. um Australia is not like that and I think the theme that I'm seeing here is uh an appeal for leadership across many sectors to actually communicate better uh communicate more. Minister, can I leave the last word with you? If you were going to deliver a single cogent message for everything that you have raised today and everything that's been raised by the rest of the panel, what would it be? single country. Thank you. Um uh this industry is vital. Uh this industry is vital to Australia's economic security into the future. It's also uh vital for uh national security into the future. Uh we have to and we are but we need to continue it. And like you sorry I'm not being so cogent or short. Uh like you said this this this is a lasting enterprise. Uh we won't uh you know resolve the issue of of creating alternative supply chains overnight. This is decadal. Uh so we we must commit and commit with purpose and commit with our our friends and partners because we can't do it alone. But I guess you know all in all it's it's a national enterprise. Australia has to step up and indeed is stepping up to lead globally in critical minerals and rare earths. Uh and you know we won't be dissuaded from that. >> What I'm hearing is Australia the gold standard in critical minerals uh through life. Yeah. Amazing. Uh lady and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time today. Ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you to please join me in in thanking our panel.