Nickel is just the beginning. Aus has a third of the world's Iron ore supply and has barely any steel making capacity and what's here has not been modernised. The Chinese are investing huge amounts in West Africa to fully integrate the iron ore to steel chain. Like, Indonesian Nickel, why would anyone buy unprocessed ore from Australia when they can have a processed product at half the price.
It didn't have to be like this. 10 years ago the Chinese was happy to invest in Australia. It was happy to build the processing plants, roads and ports at their own cost.l, as long they could get their hands on our ore. But the ideologically driven politicians says we don't need the Chinese actually investing billions in our infrastructure, which we sell to China. That is fine if the government actually filled the void and invested instead of the Chinese, but they didn't, and now we have Indonesian processed nickel.
(20min delay)