The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia (CME) has welcomed the release of Australia’s new Critical Minerals Strategy.
The CME said the Strategy paves the way for the Australian critical minerals industry’s future, but now is the time to seize on the existing possibilities.
The CME noted that numerous components of the Critical Minerals Strategy correspond with the organisation’s previous Position Paper, which will help maximise WA’s ability to create a world-leading critical minerals sector; nevertheless, more effort is needed to fulfil the framework’s objectives.
According to the CME, the Strategy focuses on areas where Australia may be competitive and emphasises that minimising duplication, risk, and uncertainty of environmental and planning clearances should be a top priority for all levels of government.
As such, CME welcomes the Australian Government‘s intention to work through the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reform process and collaborate across states and territories to guarantee speedy approval processes while maintaining the highest environmental standards.
Furthermore, the Strategy encourages the use of trade agreements and international alliances to attract foreign investment, as well as collaboration with industry to foster the formation of industrial centres and the identification of critical supporting infrastructure and services.
However, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility will contribute $500 million of current financing to projects linked with the Strategy, which the organisation found encouraging.
CME’s Position Paper emphasises the need for additional financing or tax incentives to move the dial compared to cost settings and incentives in other countries.
The Strategy also argues that bringing enough new supply of minerals online to satisfy rising demand within a suitable timescale poses a substantial challenge, which CME Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Tomkinson agrees with.
“CME strongly agrees with the Strategy’s articulation of the challenges we face in bringing new supply of minerals online to meet increasing demand, noting it can take more than 10 years to reach production from early-stage exploration,” Tomkinson said.
In addition to strategies and instruments to promote Australia’s extremely high ESG standards, Tomkinson highlighted the need to work towards reducing the timeline by eliminating duplication and streamlining processes.
“CME’s Position Paper also called for an increased focus on project facilitation to assist proponents to navigate existing processes. Enhancing this function within government will be instrumental in identifying and addressing bottlenecks in real time and translating this insight into process improvements and streamlining reforms where required,” she added.
CME’s Critical Minerals Position Paper presented the unique potential for Western Australia and the challenges and how they might be managed as demand for critical minerals increase in the race to decarbonisation.
To leverage the state and Commonwealth’s shared critical minerals aspirations, Tomkinson reiterated that policy efforts should concentrate on areas of WA’s competitive strength as a tier-1 mining jurisdiction.
“Western Australia is already a world leading jurisdiction for the upstream production of critical and battery minerals globally, a factor that will continue to increase in importance to our nation’s trade partners,” she said.
“To capitalise on the potential share of economic value to be captured domestically, a continued commitment to both sustainable, competitive upstream raw materials production and downstream processing infrastructure is crucial,” she added.
