QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia) (15:37): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. I want to focus on one issue that is particularly pertinent to my home state of Western Australia, and that was in the very good questions that were asked by Senator McDonald.

They were very good questions about critical minerals. This is, of course, an important opportunity for my home state of Western Australia because we have significant opportunities in developing the critical minerals industry in WA. There's not only the opportunity that that provides to the economy, the people of Western Australia and the enormous jobs that are there but the strategic advantage that this would bring to our whole country and indeed to our ally the United States.

This is an important issue, and it's one issue that needs to be explored in full. It was terrific to see the agreement with the United States. It's something that the coalition does fully support, and I stand as someone proud of that.

But there are some serious questions in relation to how the government intends to be able to deliver on this important arrangement. We know that critical minerals are, of course, of significant strategic value. It doesn't carry the sort of economic value that, say, the iron ore industry or the coal industry has for the country, but it has significant strategic value because we know that critical minerals and rare earths are involved in our mobile phones, computers, EVs—all sorts of opportunities.

The defence industry is absolutely reliant on them. So it is important to get this right. But we know that what is really needed here is a streamlining and an improvement in the way that these projects are able to get up and running.

If we're wanting to see that midstream processing of critical minerals, then we need to have far simpler and more expedited approvals processes, because, for a project to go from just an idea through to full production—in this country, it's taking over 10 years for projects to get up and running, and this is far too long. You lose the investment impetus. You lose that interest from investors in seeing these projects developed.

So it is absolutely critical that this government doubles down on streamlining the processes that are necessary. The other thing that is of critical importance to seeing critical minerals developed in this country is, of course, reducing the cost of energy, because developing critical minerals and doing that midstream processing requires enormous amounts of energy.

We have the capacity in this country to do that. We have significant reserves of natural gas that can be used to power the processing of these critical minerals, but we know that this government is so lax and so slow at seeing the development of those projects. In fact, their net zero ambitions are getting in the way of providing the reliable power and the cost-effective energy that is required to be able to develop these resources and to see them developed in a way that is cost-effective.

The biggest thing standing in the way of the development of the critical minerals industry is the cost of actually developing those projects. The government can't just throw a subsidy at these things, because it's a lazy approach to developing these minerals and developing these opportunities. What we need to see is the government double down on its efforts to reduce the cost of doing business in this area in Australia, because it is too prohibitive.

It doesn't have the scale like iron ore does. It doesn't have the scale like the development of the oil and gas industry does. It doesn't have the scale of coal development in this country.

What we need to see is the cost of doing business in these areas reduced. I hope that the government is taking this seriously, because I'm sure that the United States is reliant on this country stepping up and doing what it can. We cannot just rely on more subsidies like we're seeing in so many parts of the way the government deals with problems that it faces.

It just throws money. It just throws a subsidy at something, and all that is doing is bringing in a laziness. What we need to see is real action that drives down the cost, including the cost of business.

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