Extract from AUST Business today:
MINERALS RESERVE WILL MAKE MONEY: MINISTER
Resources Minister Madeleine King expects Labor’s critical minerals strategic reserve to deliver financial returns to the taxpayer and make Australia safer.
Ms King still cannot say what critical minerals the Albanese government intends to hold in its strategic reserve, more than six weeks after deciding on the controversial market intervention.
She intends to form a taskforce to work out the details of the election policy, and said it might take until July 2026 to start accumulating minerals deemed strategically important to the economy.
Lynas Rare Earths CEO Amanda Lacaze warned some Western nations would never again get access to high-performance permanent magnets from China in the fallout from the trade war between the US and Beijing.
Ms Lacaze said no such magnets – used in aerospace, defence, wind turbines and electric vehicles – had left China since the spat over tariffs. “They will start to leave, but there will be certain Western countries that never get high-performance, rare earths permanent magnets from China again,” she said on Wednesday, appearing at an event in Perth where Ms King also spoke.
Ms King and Ms Lacaze have clashed over the merits of the strategic mineral reserve, with the Lynas boss predicting the policy will create idle warehouses.
The tension comes amid new findings from the International Energy Agency that investment momentum in critical minerals has weakened, with spending up just 5 per cent in 2024, down from an increase of 14 per cent in 2023.
Lynas last week broke China’s monopoly on processing heavy rare earths by producing dysprosium at its refinery in Malaysia. The company has said it will give US defence contractors priority in the supply of dysprosium, a key ingredient in advanced magnets.
“The US defence industrial base is now secure,” Ms Lacaze said. Ms King told the same conference that Australia would be “stronger and safer” by virtue of the reserve.
“We are going to have a taskforce because you can’t just do these things on a whim,” she said.
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