PM spruiks Australia as power player in defence and energy technology

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is rallying a democratic alliance to invest huge sums needed to counter China’s grip on critical minerals and transform Australia into a power player in the race to fuel defence and green energy revolutions.

On his 11-day round-the-world diplomatic trip this week, Albanese lined up a series of bilateral discussions with world leaders about creating a supply line to counter China’s critical minerals dominance.

Since US President Donald Trump revealed a slew of global tariffs, Labor ministers and US ambassador Kevin Rudd have stepped up lobbying of leaders and officials from the US, UK and Canada to invest in Australia’s emerging $1.2 billion critical minerals reserve in exchange for guaranteed access, support for the AUKUS pact and relief from the worst of the trade barriers.

Minerals such as terbium and cobalt are a top geopolitical concern since China retaliated over US tariffs in April by blocking exports of magnets, sparking European and US carmaker fears of shutdowns and proving China’s intent to use its supply stranglehold against competitors.

“We are engaging in a range of conversations with our strategic partners as we shape up the design of the strategic reserve,” Resources Minister Madeleine King said.

“I want to ensure our strategic partners can engage with and can access the strategic reserve once it is operational, to realise our shared objectives to diversify concentrated global critical minerals supply chains, which are vital to defence and clean energy technologies.”

This masthead reported last week Australia was trying to land a minerals tie-up with the US before Albanese’s trip to Washington to meet Trump on October 20.

More than a dozen Australian miners held meetings in Washington this month to seek out equity-like stakes for the expensive task of turning Australia’s underutilised reserves into refined materials used in products from smartphones to electric vehicles and fighter jets.

Reuters reported that France, whose President Emmanuel Macron met Albanese last week in New York, was also interested in Australia’s reserves. Reuters also reported the G7 nations were considering trade measures to prevent rare earth price-dumping that include tariffs and price floors, though the countries have been reluctant to call out China explicitly as they worked to fend off Trump’s barrage of tariffs.

The federal government is hosting a summit in Australia next month to lure global investors into the energy transition.

Peter Dean, co-author of the government’s landmark Defence Strategic Review, talked up the importance of Australia’s critical minerals to the new geopolitical landscape.

The Australian National University professor is working on a project funded by the US State Department centred on AUKUS, which Albanese said on Sunday could incorporate plans to develop critical minerals.

Australia’s push for a Western supply of critical minerals aligns with Trump’s America-first approach, Dean argued.

“The big question will be how you re-energise [pillar two of AUKUS], and where do critical minerals sit? Do they sit with AUKUS, or separate bilateral agreements with the US and other allies?” he said.

“The UK is interested in critical minerals, and it seems to be one of the things the US administration is really focused on.”

Dean echoed the sentiment of former Labor leader Kim Beazley, who said on Sunday that governments needed to take ownership of critical minerals funding because Chinese state investment far outweighed what private investors could tip into projects.

“China is destroying anyone who comes into the market. They are willing to kill off competition to use the dominance as leverage,” Dean said.

“The only way you break that is with a consortium of countries where everyone agrees to invest in production. The amount of money you need is significant.”

AUKUS has been under a cloud since the Pentagon announced a review into the pact in June, but Australian officials are hopeful the deal will remain intact when the probe is completed. A range of critics, led by former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, have argued Australia was ceding sovereignty by agreeing to enmesh itself into America’s nuclear capabilities.

A parliamentary inquiry into the Australia-UK treaty attached to AUKUS will be held on Thursday. Serco, the global services giant, has made a submission to the inquiry arguing Australia did not currently have the workforce to proceed with AUKUS.

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