Its interesting that the Federal Senator (SA) David Fawcett has just featured and promoted the article about RNU on his official website. Its more than a coincidence. Fawcett is an Assistant Minister for Defence. He previously was the House of Reps member for Wakefield in Adelaide's north. It has the nations third highest proportion of workforce in manufacturing. Morrison is now overseas promoting the Quad alliance with the US, Japan and India and the need for critical materials support and fast tracking. Fawcett is also busy implementing the need for SA to be a major manufacturing hub. The PM has been pushing for more than two years to drastically improve the supply chain regulations for critical minerals. RNU is in the right place at the right time. No doubt The big wheels are a turnin' and major announcements are to be expected.
PM urges world leaders to stand up to China Australian Financial Review Sep 25, 2021 – 12.00am
Washington: Prime Minister Scott Morrison will urge world leaders at the United Nations to stand up to China and will finalise a deal with Quad partners to fast-track and secure the supply of critical minerals it sees as necessary to counter Beijing. Australia will agree the deal with Quad partners India, Japan and the United States as a way of ensuring it can develop the weapons and technology needed to counter China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. Mr Morrison will deliver a speech that, without using the word “China”, will clearly call out the communist regime for its economic and military coercion and double down on calls for an “accelerated” investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Fresh from locking in the AUKUS alliance, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines for the first time and expand military intelligence sharing, Mr Morrison said the situation in the Indo-Pacific had deteriorated significantly and that it was now the time to face reality on the threats in the region. “The global strategic environment has rapidly changed, indeed deteriorated in many respects, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region where we live here in Australia,” Mr Morrison will tell the UN. “The changes we face are many, whether it’s tensions over territorial claims, rapid military modernisation, foreign interference, cyber threats, disinformation and indeed, economic coercion,” he said. “We must reinforce a sustainable rules-based order, while ensuring it is also adaptable to the great power realities of our time. Our voice is clear, it’s direct, it’s respectful, it’s constructive. ”He also wants the World Health Organisation to lift its game on COVID-19. “We also need to accelerate efforts to identify how COVID-19 first emerged,” Mr Morrison said. “Australia supports the calls for a stronger, more independent World Health Organisation, with enhanced surveillance and pandemic response powers. This should be the duty of every single member of the WHO, to share that ambition for a WHO that can seek to protect us all in these circumstances".
Minerals agreement Mr Morrison, alongside Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Unites States President Joe Biden, will meet for their first in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) where they will formally agree to mapping out supply chains for key products and critical minerals, as well as draw up new regulations that will see projects fast-tracked and greater offtake agreement certainty.
About 50 per cent of the world’s lithium comes from Australia. Lithium is a key component of battery power and lithium metal is used for special military applications. However about 90 per cent of Australia’s production issent to China for refinement and many of the projects in Australia are financed by Chinese investors. Dozens of critical minerals projects in Australia that are not yet approved or financed could benefit from approval processes being fast-tracked or government subsidies and incentives established by the Quad’s agreement.
In the US, the government has $US30 billion ($41 billion) on offer in its cheap loan program designed to ensure projects to produce and refine critical minerals get off the ground.In Australia there are multiple projects, such as the Wesfarmers and SQM owned Covalent Lithium, which owns the Mount Holland lithium project in Western Australia.
Others include the Lion Town Resources project in the Kathleen Valley in Western Australia, Core Lithium’s Northern Territory project and Pilbara Minerals, which is looking to expand in Western Australia.
Some of these projects have Chinese funding and it is understood that the new Quad agreement will seek to expand offtake agreements to make them more attractive for investors in India, Japan and the United States.
There are dozens of examples of critical mineral projects that could benefit from governments using “national interest” to expedite approvals and smooth supply chains. Australian group Lynas, which is the world’s second-largest producer of rare earths minerals, was last year chosen by the Pentagon to develop initial engineering and design plans for a US processing plant. Australia and India have significant untapped critical minerals resources, but need to lock in more customers outside China to make it viable.
The Prime Minister has been pushing for more than two years the need to drastically improve the supply chain regulations for critical minerals. The latest AUKUS military intelligence sharing agreement has triggered a faster building of trust around the supply chains.The Quad agreement will also accelerate analysis on the greatest vulnerabilities in terms of technology that countries rely on, and expand co-operation between the nations into space research and technology.
All four countries have skin in the game in this arena, and are natural partners to have their agencies more closely collaborate.‘We’ll stand up for our allies and friends’ The Quad agreement and speech caps of a week in which Mr Morrison met with more than seven world leaders following the announcement of Australia’s most important military alliance in 70 years.President Biden praised Mr Morrison’s leadership, called Australia its “closest ally” and said America would work “lockstep” with Australia on defending democracy. Mr Morrison will tell the UN on Friday (Saturday AEST) that it is “essential that countries pursue interests in ways that are mutually respectful and support stability and security”. He said he wanted to see “a global order where sovereign nations can flourish, free from coercion, because of collaborative and purposeful action”.This follows President Biden’s speech to the UN, where he too restrained himself from naming China but clearly conveyed the concerns about the country’s actions in the Indo-Pacific.
“We’ll stand up for our allies and our friends and oppose attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones, whether through changes to territory by force, economic coercion, technological exploitation or disinformation,” Mr Biden told the UN.“We’re not seeking – I’ll say it again – we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs,” he said.
A few day earlier, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken was clearer on China’s role and how important support for AUKUS was, given the growing tension over China in the Indo-Pacific.
“We’ve raised publicly and privately our serious concerns about Beijing’s use of economic coercion against Australia,” Mr Blinken said. “We’ve made it clear that actions like these targeting our allies will hinder improvements in our own relationship with the Chinese government.” “We welcome Australia’s leadership in standing up for universal values that we seek to uphold and helping to shape an Indo-Pacific region where nations conduct themselves in ways that enhance stability.”
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