SPEECH TO THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL MINING AND RESOURCES CONFERENCE – SYDNEY

23 October 2025

E&OE

Australia faces the most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War.

Across the globe, conflict and war, trade and economic coercion are apparent almost everywhere we look.

Director-General of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer, said recently:

“Our adversaries are exploiting our preference for restraint and de-escalation – and leveraging coercion, cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation to test us without triggering outright conflict.

Often they act through proxies – whether organised crime syndicates, front companies, armed groups or maritime militias.

These tactics exploit the openness of our economies, societies and polities, and are very hard for liberal democracies to counter.”

There is also an increased focus on the need to diversify global supply chains not only of our traditional energy sources, but of key critical minerals and rare earths required for defence and technological developments.

And our critical minerals, our secure and stable regulatory regime, and our defence and strategic partnerships such as AUKUS, Five Eyes, the Quad, and our numerous bilateral security relationships, will be key to unlocking our future potential.

It is clear that Australia holds the minerals and the capability to supply the next mining boom, and deliver the strategic and critical minerals our partners need.

What is not clear is whether we will be able to maximise this opportunity – and this is where the Albanese Labor Government has been asleep at the wheel.

Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Albanese travelled to the United States to meet with President Trump and his administration, to secure a better deal for Australia’s critical minerals.

And I welcome the announcement of a policy framework between the United States and Australia to support investment and further development of our critical minerals.

An announcement such as this was long-overdue, and now is not the time for the Government to rest on their laurels. If this agreement with the United States is the recipe, the Australian Government has to demonstrate that it knows and can deliver the ingredients to deliver.

The Prime Minister has been in office since 2022, and has overseen the collapse of our nickel industry, interruption of antimony shipments by China, increasing pressure on Australian lithium miners, whilst overseeing the destabilisation of our entire energy grid.

And whilst this agreement with the United States is a welcome step, we must continue to support new projects by driving down the cost of energy, expediting approvals, and securing supply-chain certainty with our key partners and allies.

Opportunities

In order to be included on Australia’s Critical Minerals List, there is an assessment of the following criteria. The mineral must be:

• essential to our modern technologies, economies and national security;
• for which Australia has geological potential for resources;
• in demand from our strategic international partners;
• that are vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

These criteria paint a clear picture of the eligibility to receive ‘critical status’ by the Government, but also present an opportunity to better maximise and leverage our natural endowment.

For the last three years, I believe that our critical minerals strategy has been lacking.

We have not been acknowledging the changing strategic and geopolitical environment Australia and our allies have been operating in, nor properly addressing the clear market manipulation of key minerals like copper, nickel, and aluminium by state actors.

It is for these reasons that I argued for a refocus in priority of our critical minerals strategy at the last election.

The Coalition supported a return to a broad-based critical minerals strategy – with wider benefits to the sector – designed to:

• support national and regional security, and that of our allies and partners;
• provide clarity and certainty for strategic long-term investments; and
• safeguard the security of supply chains, including strategic supply chains.

The Coalition has been arguing that Australia should be leveraging our critical minerals capability to pursue off-take agreements and bilateral critical minerals supply deals with our diplomatic, trade and defence partners, including the Quad, AUKUS and Five Eyes.

Leveraging these existing strategic relationships will only serve to support further diversification of global minerals supply chains, and strengthen our trading relationships with our strategic partners.

And Australian industry has been attempting to progress this.

ASM’s $923 million AUD Letter of Interest from the United States’ Export Import Bank in 2024 is a clear example of cooperation between strategic partners.

The world’s only commercial producer of separated light and heavy rare earth oxides outside of China, Lynas Rare Earths’ Memorandum of Understanding with Noveon Magnetics, the only operational U.S. manufacturer of sintered rare earth magnets, is another example of this.

But unfortunately, other new developments have been swimming against the tide, without the clear and unequivocal support of the Federal Government.

I applaud the work many of you have done to secure capital and offtakes with our strategic trading partners – but there has been an absence of a whole of government approach to this industry.

It is Government’s role to support dialogue and communication between Australia and our strategic partners. It is not new information that our partners like the United States, the UK, Canada, Japan and Korea are in desperate need of our rare earths and critical minerals.

But because of a lack of urgent action by the Albanese Government, you in industry have been forced to go it alone, whilst also suffering from crippling energy costs, approvals delays, anti-investment industrial relations changes, and increased global uncertainty.

After three years of Labor’s sneaky anti-productivity taxes: the Safeguards tax, Scope 3 emissions reporting, the Capacity Investment Scheme, and the family ute and car tax, the price of energy and the cost of doing business have skyrocketed.

Approvals are duplicated at a federal government level, activist lawfare is not only allowed but funded by the government, and necessary infrastructure projects have been bogged in minister’s offices.

All the while, some of our minerals which are strongly desired by our allies, have suffered because the Government refused to include them on Australia’s Critical Minerals List.

It is for those reasons that the Coalition called to include copper; zinc, bauxite; alumina; aluminium; potash; phosphate; tin; and uranium on our Critical Minerals List.

Because our Critical Minerals Strategy must be based on future geostrategic requirements, and not constrained by a net-zero-only mindsight.

Of course, our minerals like lithium and gallium are important for the construction of solar panels – much as our metallurgical coal and iron ore are crucial for the steel they require.

Just as our rare earths, but also our copper are needed to produce wind turbines.

But these are not the only products the world needs. And with the changing geopolitical environment, more strategic materials such as antimony and uranium are going to be required in far greater volumes, and from diversified supply chains.

Uranium

In mid-2023, on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Sapporo, Japan, Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, created the ‘Sapporo 5’ – a group determined to diversify global supply chains of uranium away from Russia or Russian-linked sources.

In December 2023, this group pledged at least $4.2 billion USD in investment to further this goal – and in September 2024, they had exceeded this at $5.6 billion USD.

This group is committed to ensuring that future supply chains of uranium for energy use only are strengthened and supported, and diversified from Russia.

Australia holds the world’s largest resources of uranium – approximately one third of global identified resources – yet we are only the fourth largest producer.

The United States and the United Kingdom are some of our closest partners – AUKUS, the Quad, Five Eyes – with Canada and Japan forming parts of those partnerships, amongst others.

These five countries are not only key members of the G7, but are also some of our closest strategic allies, key trading partners, and have highlighted a clear desire to secure new sources of uranium for their nuclear energy networks.

If we turn back to the Critical Minerals pillars, they outlined minerals that were:

• essential to our modern technologies, economies and national security;
• for which Australia has geological potential for resources;
• in demand from our strategic international partners;
• that are vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

With Australia having successfully operated a nuclear facility less than 30 kilometres away from here at Lucas Heights, developing essential medicines and research technology, it is obvious that uranium and nuclear fuel are essential to our modern technology and national security.

We also clearly have the world’s best resources, and our closest strategic partners are investing billions to diversify the current supply chains. We are an experienced and reliable exporter of uranium and a signatory to the non proliferation treaty.

I hope I am painting a picture of just how critical this one mineral is, and how Australia is well positioned to be a greater supplier and why the Coalition has been calling for its inclusion on the Critical Minerals List.

Inclusion of any mineral on the list would not only provide access to the multi-billion dollar Critical Minerals Facility, and additional Departmental support, but would also send a clear signal to our strategic partners and international investors that the Australian Government 100 per cent backs new projects, and will do everything in its power to support approvals and get investment flowing.

Conclusion

We have the minerals and the expertise to generate wealth for Australia, and secure key minerals for our partners.

We should be leveraging the decades-long strategic partnerships – partnerships that have served us and our allies well – into developing more Australian mines and producing more critical minerals for defence, research and development, medicine and emerging technologies.

And if we can constructively ensure the future development of our critical minerals industry, both Australia and the world will prosper.

I remain positive for the outlook of mining and critical minerals in Australia.

And I look forward to examining the developments between the Australian Government and President Trump on securing a mutually beneficial critical minerals deal.

Australia has been an energy supplier to the world since 1799, with our first coal export from Newcastle.

And now, Australia has the natural endowment and the stable regulatory regime to become the strategic supplier of the 21st Century.

I look forward to seeing the next great mining boom of Australia develop.

Thank you.