Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to take note of this most important matter, Australia's critical minerals industry. The coalition strongly supports the growth of this sector, one that is so vital to not only Australia's future prosperity but the prosperity and advancement of the world. Delivering ongoing, significant and rock-solid investment into the critical minerals sector is crucial for securing our national security and our economic wealth and for meeting the demands of the future. It is crucial because Australia is fortunate to have a critical minerals sector with such extraordinary potential, hosting vast deposits which are among the world's best. From mobile phones to computers, from microchips to banknotes, from defence to health, the importance of these resources is all around us.

The coalition is proud of what we achieved in critical minerals during our term in government. We created Australia's first Critical Minerals Strategy, a landmark document that signalled stability and certainty and the coalition's commitment to the sector. We delivered an update in 2022 to better reflect the shifting global mineral environment, and in 2019 the former Australian Prime Minister and the US President coordinated the first US-Australian action plan for critical minerals cooperation.

Further to this, the coalition has invested billions developing our critical minerals sector. In 2021, the coalition set up the Critical Minerals Facility, a loan facility specifically targeted at supporting the diversification of the critical minerals value chain, including supply chains and downstream processing. In April 2022, Iluka Resources was awarded an historic $1.25 billion loan to develop Australia's first integrated rare earths refinery at Eneabba in Western Australia. In 2022 the coalition set up the $200 million Critical Minerals Accelerator Initiative to provide targeted funding towards early-stage and mid-stage critical minerals projects. This funding was directed at key projects designed to build our production capability. The first six grants, totalling approximately $50 million of investment, were announced by the coalition in April 2022. Unfortunately, this program was cut by over $100 million by the Labor government, a disappointing blow to other projects seeking to kickstart investment.

The coalition also committed $50.5 million over three years in the March 2022-23 budget to establish the Virtual National Critical Minerals Research and Development Centre. We extended the Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive with an additional $100 million in support and created the $225 million Exploring for the Future program. All of this great work highlights the proud legacy the coalition—in particular the last two resource ministers, Keith Pitt and Matt Canavan—has in the critical minerals space. This is a legacy that has set critical minerals up for a promising, sustainable and productive future.

This now brings us to the minister's announcement last month, the 2023 Critical Minerals Strategy. I wrote to Minister King strongly advocating for the inclusion of potash, phosphate, aluminium, alumina, bauxite, nickel, copper and zinc. To mitigate supply chain risks to regional food security, Australia needs to increase domestic extraction of potash and phosphate in order to secure these minerals, which are vital for large-scale quality food production. Including these on the critical minerals list will help provide security of supply domestically, assist Australia in providing regional food security and help achieve the goal of growing our agricultural industry to $100 billion by 2030.

Further minerals identified on a number of international critical minerals lists—aluminium, nickel, copper and zinc—are essential for the functioning of our modern technologies and economies and, in an increasingly unstable world, are susceptible to the shocks of disrupted international supply chains. Countries around the world have identified the importance of many of these minerals to their economies, with the International Energy Agency, the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Union and the Republic of Korea identifying some or all of these strategic minerals. As we have seen in recent years, global supply chain disruptions can occur at a pace that far outstrips the development of required new mineral resources. As such, the heightened uncertainty of reliable access has driven many nations around the world to strengthen their supply chains for many of the minerals in which Australia is either globally dominant or competitive. However, despite these strong arguments in support of adding these minerals to the list, the government has instead chosen to postpone any further reviews or updates to the strategy until 2026. It's a very disappointing outcome for the sector.

What has the strategy actually outlined? Three of the six key focus areas are concerning to the coalition: promoting Australia as a world leader in ESG performance; unlocking investment in enabling infrastructure and services; and growing a skilled workforce. Firstly, on ESG performance, specifically the calls to streamline the EPBC approvals, the government's work on the review of the EPBC Act does not fill the coalition with confidence. Progress on new environmental laws and standards is stalling under Labor, and, despite having been in the job for over a year, the environment minister still appears to be months away from finishing that work. It is appearing increasingly likely that Labor's approach will culminate in more regulation, more red tape and less incentives and clarity for businesses and resource projects.

Secondly, on infrastructure, it is laughable that Labor now claim one of their priorities is unlocking investment in enabling infrastructure and services when they have done so much damage to the infrastructure sector. In Labor's first budget, they cut $9.6 billion from the infrastructure program. This was in addition to cutting more than $10 billion in regional programs and $7 billion in dams and water infrastructure. In the May budget, Labor announced a 90-day infrastructure review, now pushed out to 105 days, which is expected to make further cuts to road and rail infrastructure across regional Australia. As a result of these delays, projects are being put on hold, some workers stood down and some contracts relinquished.

Finally, on growing a skilled workforce, it is ironic that the Critical Minerals Strategy is calling for a skilled mining workforce when currently the government is trying to push through destructive industrial relations legislation at odds with our nation's mining sector. The government's same job, same pay legislation is deeply misleading. Employers should be able to reward their employees for their individual experience, job performance or ability. Labor needs to stop taking direction from their union paymasters and adopting policies which will not work in reality.

However, despite the issues in half of the government's objectives, what do we find when we unpack the new investment in the sector? It appears Labor are relying on programs delivered by the former federal coalition government as the main investments to develop the sector. They have committed no real programs or initiatives of their own to help investment in critical minerals projects. Labor's budget provided no real investment into the sector, with $57.1 million for the Critical Minerals International Partnerships program and $23.4 million for critical minerals policy development and project facilitation. Both of these funding pools are largely administrative with neither going to supporting new projects or investing in developing our critical minerals reserves. This funding is a drop in the ocean in comparison to the billions the coalition invested, and to quote Mineral Resources managing director Chris Ellison, 'This funding is the Australian government telling industry to go it alone.'

The $500 million investment from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is not new funding, but simply earmarked funding from the $2 billion increase that David Littleproud, as then minister for Northern Australia, along with myself as former special envoy, announced in December 2021. Overall, the coalition strongly support the critical minerals sector. We believe there is a bright future for the critical minerals sector to operate alongside vital traditional resources industries like iron, coal and gas.

The update to the critical minerals strategy provided the government with an opportunity to illustrate its plans for the development of the industry; however, what we saw announced was far more fluff than substance. Australia is on the cusp of reaping the generational rewards of building a vast and substantive critical minerals sector. Every day Australia competes on the global market for investment dollars for our resources sector—dollars that create jobs here in Australia and put money back into our economy. The coalition set a secure foundation for the sector's growth; it is now up to the government to ensure this opportunity is not wasted.