Interesting article, page-86

Australia ready to play dirty against China’s rare earths manipulation
AFRMay 21, 2025 – 6.11pm

Resources Minister Madeleine King has a simple message for those who suggest the Albanese government’s critical minerals stockpile represents a deliberate attempt to manipulate the market: Get real.

“We can’t pretend that we live in an ideal, global, open and free trade situation,” King told the Financial Review Mining Summit. “I would like to, but that doesn’t exist right now, and I don’t know when it’s coming back.”

King is blunt. The markets for rare earths and critical minerals are clearly being manipulated, with China’s recent rare earths exports ban – which Lynas chief executive Amanda Lacaze described as sophisticated, in that it can target both products and customers – simply the latest example.

The details of the critical minerals reserve are so sketchy at this stage that the whole thing feels more like a state of mind than a concrete proposal. King, who is set to launch a taskforce that will be asked to come up with something in about 12 months, has given only the most basic of outlines.

The government will sign offtake agreements with strategic projects on a voluntary basis, and then could do several different things with the minerals it buys: sell to strategic partners (countries or companies), pool minerals to help smaller players and projects get market access or, in relatively rare instances, physically stockpile rare earths for short periods.

How all that actually works is yet to be decided.

King reckons the reserve needs flexibility to adapt with changes in the market, and certain minerals may come off and on the list at different times. She also says the reserve’s purchasing decisions will be strategic, and won’t be used to support uncommercial projects, although clearly any project that wins the support of the reserve will get a big boost.

There’s obviously a lot of grey there, so the rules, systems and processes of this initiative will need to be nailed down. What was clear from Wednesday’s summit was that industry will want to be involved in the development of the government’s plan. But while there is a bit of healthy scepticism – IGO chief executive Ivan Vella pointed to Australia’s experience with the wool board as an example of where such industry schemes can go wrong – the overwhelming view was that the government is on the right track.

Rebecca Tomkinson, CEO of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia, says the reserve will not be a panacea, but it is “a recognition that we do need to put in structural supports for what is a very disrupted market and one that has a dominant player to it”.

Clearly, there is an element of Australia playing a bit dirty here. Luca Giacovazzi, chief executive of Andrew Forrest’s mining investment vehicle Wyloo, quite rightly called the concept a hybrid between free market principles – which Australia and Australian miners typically defend to the hilt – and China’s approach of out-and-out manipulation.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, he says. “We should give the government some space to come out with what it’s actually going to look like. And I think they should be commended for thinking creatively because this isn’t a simple thing to try and solve for.”

Rowena Smith, CEO of rare earths hopeful Australian Strategic Materials, agrees with Giacovazzi that the critical minerals reserve could be quite powerful if it can act as an aggregator for smaller projects which can struggle to convince big customers – say, in the US defence sector – of their legitimacy.

At the end of the day, the main thing the critical mineral reserve needs to do is to put a little crack in China’s control of rare earths pricing. As Giacovazzi says, the critical minerals sector is dominated by a landlord – China – that has spent 50 years building its rare earth industry, and it has almost unfettered power to extract economic rents from wherever it wants along the value chain. When it buys critical minerals for its new reserve, the Australian government will have a chance to show the world that rare earths can be priced in a different way.

As Smith says, Australia’s rare earths “just want fair pricing and stable pricing” to have a fighting chance in this great global race. The critical minerals reserve won’t be a silver bullet, but it’s a little chance to fight fire with fire.