QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator McDONALD (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (15:48): I want to take note, again, of the response to my question on the US critical minerals deal. This is a shocking example of when cheap marketing slogans are used in place of real action and real change. The announcement of the critical minerals policy framework between the United States of America and Australia is a welcome step in the right direction as we secure continued investment in Australia's critical minerals, but more action is needed in order to see this fulfilled.

It took months—in fact, nearly a year—for the Prime Minister to secure a meeting and policy agreement with President Trump. The Prime Minister has been in government since 2022 and, during that time, has overseen thousands of jobs lost from our mining and manufacturing sector. He's seen the collapse of our nickel industry, interruption of our antimony shipments by China, increasing pressure on Australia's lithium miners and destabilisation of our entire energy grid.

After three years of Labor's sneaky antiproductivity taxes—the safeguard tax, scope 3 emissions reporting, the Capacity Investment Scheme and the family ute and car tax—the price of energy has skyrocketed and the price of doing business has gone through the roof. Let's be clear. This is a competition.

Australia's resources are fantastic. Australia is a world leader in mining expertise. But, under Labor, we are not winning the war on competition.

On average, it is taking new mines 16 years to progress to first ore from discovery, and it is critical that Labor takes action on these approvals—genuine action—but also halts this vexatious lawfare that they fund. It is the government who refuses to defund the Environmental Defenders Office. They provide them with millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to target resources projects.

It is laughable that the government are now saying they wish to expedite the approvals process. Again, while the coalition welcomes the step forward, there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding this agreement and the remainder of Labor's critical minerals agenda, including the strategic reserve and the critical minerals production tax incentive, but this is true to form from a government which does not believe in transparency.

I believe most of their policies are, in fact, made up on the run. We know that, before the election, they announced proudly they had spent the entire weekend coming up with their critical minerals plan. The coalition has repeatedly called for the government to leverage strategic and trading partnerships.

The agreement of the US is a welcome endorsement of this strategy, but it's time now for the Albanese government to connect with our other partners in Europe and South-East Asia, such as the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Korea, to secure further agreements to strengthen the resilience of our critical minerals supply chains. It's high time that the government recognises and broadens Australia's critical minerals strategy to recognise the changing geopolitical environment and supports further strategic agreements by focusing on the national security of Australia and our allies.

We have to support supply chain diversification, particularly when you think of the malicious market manipulation by certain state actors. We have been arguing that Australia should be leveraging our critical minerals capability to pursue offtake agreements and bilateral critical minerals supply deals with our diplomatic, trade and defence partners, including the Quad, AUKUS and Five Eyes partners, because leveraging these will only serve to support further diversification of global minerals supply chains and strengthen our trading relationships.

But I just need to make clear that the government continuing to fund activist lawfare threatens all of this potential and possibility. We will not be able to partner with our partners in order to benefit from the critical minerals deal if we do not take action, because Labor have done everything to kill investment appetite right here in this country.