Amy Remeikis on Australia's critical minerals bargaining chip

Hi, I'm Daniel James, and you're listening the seven Am. Australia is positioning itself as a critical supplier of the minerals the world needs to build clean technology, but for now China dominates the market and its griplin supply chains gives it enormous leverage. At the same time, the Albanesi government is racing China to shore up its influence in the Pacific, a region already feeling the sharpest impacts of

The agenda was, you.

Know, all the usual stuff, so security packs. Working together these very important countries is a very important strategic partners and allies of the United States, and.

Together we have a lot of shared priorities.

A lot of things, a lot of talk about, you know, the country that's responsible for the Quad and the reason that everyone's all there, without that country actually being named.

The importance of our partnership is highlighted by the urgency of the strategic challenges that we all face.

Which is China the giant elephant in the Quad room.

It is essential that nations of the Indoor Pacific have the freedom of choice, so essential to make right decisions on development and security.

And then they got around to, you know, one of the big issues for the future, particularly for the Quad nations, which is critical minerals.

Clinical minerals not just access to the raw material, but also access to the ability to process and refine it to usable materials.

And more importantly, what they're calling the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, which is basically those countries coming together to kind of establish their own supply chain for critical minerals that does not involve China.

So we've been hearing a lot about critical minerals lately. Why are they so critical right now when it comes to dealing with the US.

Well, they're very well named critical minerals, aren't they.

A quick rundown on what.

Critical minerals are just so we can talk about why exactly they are so important. So it's anything that is needed for new technology.

So we're talking batteries, we're.

Talking evs, fiber optic cables, anything that you can think of that is modern technology relies on this big group of things that we call critical mineral and rare earths, and Australia has about thirty six of the fifty identified critical.

Minerals, so we're doing okay.

But China is still absolutely dominating in that space, particularly lithium, which is one of the big things that you need to create batteries, which is what most of the world is transitioning towards. China not only mindes lithium and has pretty great stockpiles of critical minerals, it's also absolutely killing

Global superpower, could turn off the tap.

And that means that they will be the only ones who are able to manufacture the batteries that are going to be part of our everyday life. Wind turbines, the solar paddles, the cars, so these are all the things.

That they were discussing at the Quad.

So Australia has a bit of a card to play when it comes to critical minerals. Have we actually promised anything on that front yet.

Well, the card that we have to play is that we've got them and we're looking at creating this as our new industry.

So anybody who's had the unfortunate.

Displeasure of hearing about the future Made in Australia strategy that the Albanese government is going on about. Essentially it's bringing manufacturing and processing back to Australia and critical minerals is at the core of that.

Australia's natural resources are so important, but we need to develop a new critical minerals strategy nationally.

In terms of what Australia has promised, we've promised that we will cooperate, that we will work to establish these supply chains outside of China, that we will work to ensure that we have our domestic supply and processing.

And that we are open to trade.

So we're talking to the United States, which is basically under the Trump administration going around and hoovering up as many deals as possible.

So Australia is.

Working with the United States, but we haven't promised anything entirely concrete yet, and that is mostly because we aren't quite sure what we are doing ourselves.

We can't just sit back and allow ourselves to be at the end of global supply chains. We need to put it simply, we need to make more stuff here that simple, not export our minerals, wait for the values to be added somewhere else and then import it back at much higher value.

We have a vague idea that there's going to be a critical minerals reserve in Australia, which means that we will be keeping some for ourselves, which is not something that.

We did with gas.

And there is a vague idea that we are going to process things here. How we pay for that, who pays for it, who owns it, how we taps for that.

None of that has been worked out yet.

So the backdrop to all of this is that there is a hope in camera that critical minerals will strength in Australia's hand when it comes to negotiating tariff relief and also strengthen a hand when it comes to the US's commitment to ORCUS. So will any arrangement around critical minerals help with those negotiations potentially.

Well, the problem with that is that the Trump administration isn't stable. You don't actually know what they're going to agree to and stick to. Nothing that Donald Trump says is guaranteed. And the way that Trump is loosening those tariffs really depends on the day and how he feels

So if China.

Goes okay, well look we'll give you x YZ, Trump will be like, cool, we don't care about supply chains in the future. We just care about what we can get now, and that kind of deals Australia out of these immediate dealings. So Australia and the other coordinations South Korea and Japan and India and all of our allies are basically trying to play four D chess with Trump.

So there's a lot of.

Work being done behind the scenes to ensure that you keep Trump happy. You deal with what you've got in front of you, but you also keep an eye into what's happening in the future at a time when maybe Trump isn't bleeding America and maybe that there's a little bit easier to negotiate.

After the break Australia's race with China in the Pacific, and the Australia is pushing ahead with forming stronger ties with our Pacific neighbors in an effort to push back against China. So what in Rhodes is China made in the region.

Well, China under the Coalition made massive inroads with soft power, so basically of applying a lot of low interest loans to Pacific nation countries in order for them to keep their economies afloat. They're building infrastructure, they're building hospitals, they're doing educational programs. There's a lot more freedom of movement between China and the Pacific nations. And Australia kind of woke up one day and went, oh, that doesn't seem so great for us, because maybe China puts our military

And so a lot of the.

Pacific nations has come out and said, okay, you can't just do roads and hospitals anymore. What are you actually doing about climate which is the number one issue for Pacific nations. China is making promises where they're talking about basically a lot easier pathways for migration to ensure that you can basically be from a Pacific nation but also move to China with support if you need to.

Those conversations have.

Started, and now the Pacific nations are saying to Australia, well, what are you doing on that? Because you're still approving fossil fuel projects. You aren't actually dealing us into these conversations, and we're sick of just being patted on the head and told to be you know, good boys and girls and off you go. What are you actually doing? That's a much bigger challenge for the Albanezy government.

So this hands a lot of leverage actually to a lot of these specific nations when it comes to things like climate policy. So what assurances have the Alberanuzi government given some of these countries in relation to climate policy.

So we had the first deal with tu Valu, which was essentially to set up a lottery system to allow people living in Tuvalu to move to Australia. But Vanihatu and other nations are saying, well, what are you doing for us, because we're in exactly the same boat. You can't pick and choose which of your neighbors that you.

Decide to help. And so Vanahatu is saying, well, you know what, we want, easier migration.

We want you to drop so many of the immigration checks and things and that you have in place for us so that we can also plan for our future.

And if you don't do it, then China will.

And finally, Amy, China has a great degree of clout, being probably the emergency superpawer of the twenty first century, but can it claim any moral superiority when it comes to climate action at this point?

No, it can't, but neither can we, And so it's really easy to say, oh, well, you know, China's not decarbonizing as well, and China's responsible for x amount of fossil fuel, but so's Australia, and particularly when.

It comes to exports.

Australia is still continuing to approve of fossil fuel projects, including the Northwest Shelf expansion, and while we're doing that, we're still talking to the Pacific and saying, oh hey, how about you come and host the UN Climate Conference with us, so we can tell everybody that we're still.

A happy family.

We say one thing and we do another all the time, and we have done that when it comes to the Pacific Nations for.

A very very long period of time.

We do not have a great history when it comes to looking after Pacific Nations as we have said that we would, and you can go all the way back to Blackbirding and beyond to see how some of those bonds have been broken. It's easier for China at the moment because they don't have the same history with the Pacific Nations that Australia does, and they have a lot of money and a lot of power, and at the

Amy, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

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