Nickel to be placed on critical minerals list, giving WA miners access to $4 billion fund, page-10

"This situation is going to get even worse for Australia as countries like Indonesia and other developing countries rich in resources start to grow economically and technically. This will result in better ways (cheaper and faster ways) to extract their minerals, plus their infrastructure will advance making it easier to export. They also generally have better relationships with neighbours in the region to get better to deals to keep their industry strong."

Not to mention those countries (especially Indonesia) are building new coal power plants and using gas to produce the low cost energy to further make our mining uncompetitive. Ironic in some ways considering what the product being produced is being used for. But Indonesia is unconcerned about that - they simply want to sell as much of what they have as possible to the market. The ball is now in the Australian government's court.