JOURNALIST: On iron ore -

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yep.

JOURNALIST: So, the early, you know, first 33 days shows that the sort of trial index is having lower prices than the traditional incumbent. What does the Federal Government think? Are you guys concerned that the federal budget’s biggest commodity input might be sort of getting skinned here?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, clearly iron ore is the bedrock of the economy, and the exports out of the Pilbara are very important to the Australian community, but also, of course, the federal budget. So, the pricing mechanisms that are being trialled at the moment, these are negotiations between the miners themselves and their purchasers. So, we have to let that play out, and we keep an active watch on it at all times, as everyone does on the iron ore price these days.

JOURNALIST: In your – it’s struck me as interesting during your time as Minister, there’s been the creation of commodity price indexes has been like this recurring niche theme for nerds like us.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yes indeed, yeah.

JOURNALIST: Because LME, nickel, carbon -

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: That’s right, yeah.

JOURNALIST: An issue, and then rare earth is sort of all about the Asian metals index and not being reliable.

JOURNALIST: And lithium.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: And lithium, yeah.

JOURNALIST: And now this sort of iron ore issue. Do we as a nation sort of need to – I don’t know, do we need a Royal Commission; do we need like – do we need? --

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: (laughs). I’m not going to go down that path, I can assure you.

JOURNALIST: Do we need to sort of - Are you confident that this system, these systems generally are robust, or are they actually quite flimsy?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, international markets are in flux, I think there’s no doubt about it. We’ve seeing that kind of market disruption from many corners, and I’m not naming any particular one, but we will see this almost on a rolling basis, I don’t know, maybe like the past four years almost. So what we’ve been working on in critical minerals and rare earths is how to develop a new market that reflects the true cost of extracting and refining those products so it reflects the true cost of labour, standards and so forth. And there’s a lot of countries working together in how we do that because at the moment the current prices don’t reflect that. So, while that’s going on, there’s also the purchasers in our biggest purchase nation China doing a similar thing, not by standards but based on them using their market heft to see what they might do about their market as well. So, I guess these things are happening in different commodity spaces quite a bit. They’re highly technical. I don’t think they capture the attention of the public more widely. But obviously, the price of iron ore is such a bulk commodity that we’ve been really importantly had the light on for some time, a long time indeed, as part of our budget, you know that’s something we have to keep an eye on. But people, it gets reported as this profit for Rio being cut into, but it’s the budget bottom line that is  affected by it. So, of course, the government is always monitoring these things.

JOURNALIST: Did you have a question?

JOURNALIST: Yeah, well, my question was I believed that Mark Carney would be in town next week, and we’re wondering if we should be expecting any developments with critical minerals, practice stockpiling or any agreement or anything like that?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I’m not going to foreshadow any visits by international leaders. I will express my sympathy to the Canadians at losing the gold medal ice hockey match the other night which I watched into overtime, it was unbelievable. We are working very closely with the Canadian Government on critical minerals; we are two producer nations. I speak with Minister Tim Hodgson pretty regularly. I saw him in Toronto last year and have been in contact with him quite frequently. There’s a lot Canada and Australia can do together on critical minerals as producer nations, both in that standard-setting space around how we change markets or implement our own standards-based market that truly reflects the price of the extraction of critical minerals and rare earths. So, they’re great people to work with, to be honest.

JOURNALIST: So that would be Australia and Canada. I can’t really think of another large producer nation, really?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, there is, not a nation but a group of nations, the Latin American-South American nations are very important as well in critical minerals. I just think Canada and Australia are just, have a shared Commonwealth background, I suppose, but also more advanced along the path of critical minerals extraction and processing.

JOURNALIST: So, are we on track to have some announcements around this stockpile for the end of the year?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: The critical minerals strategic reserve? Yeah, it’s not a stockpile.

JOURNALIST: Yeah, exactly, sorry, strategic reserve.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I know everyone loves that word. And it’s really, the Americans announced Project Vault -  it’s openly stockpile for them. But the strategic reserve, we’ve already announced the three focus commodities. We’re still working with industry on what the mechanisms will be. We will have legislation this year ready for operation next year. And then some parts of it, you know, we believe will be able to bring in to being in advance of the legislation that bits of the reserve that won’t need new legislative powers for EFA. And those new powers for EFA will be really important, provide the flexibility that’s required for a state based credit agency to go in to realms it hasn’t been before like off take agreements and so forth.

JOURNALIST: And how do you get the staffing to do that? I mean, we are used to dealing with the Glencores and [indistinct], right?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah.

JOURNALIST: That is a tough world -- I mean, I’ve worked in that for many, many years. It’s hard to think that bureaucrats could jump into a puddle and not get their --

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, I think you might be underestimating some of our bureaucrats. We have some extraordinary knowledge and expertise that has been developed through the NAIF, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility which runs a very flexible financing role. And then through the NRF. As that has ramped up, there’s some strategic thinkers in that as well about how we usually finance, tools. And more importantly, we’re engaging with that industry. That expertise that sits outside of a government so that we can learn from them and bring their ideas in to how we do create this reserve. And I think that industry has been, so the finance industry, but also the critical minerals industry and the wider resources industry have been very helpful in suggesting how we might structure this. Obviously, we go through a process of diligence and further examination. But it’s been quite uplifting, actually, the amount of collaboration that we’re going into on the mineral strategic reserve.

JOURNALIST: One more quick one, so nickel is a critical mineral --

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yes it is, yep.

JOURNALIST: BHP have openly said on, that they are considering a sale of Nickel West -- which obviously [Indistinct] in your neighbourhood.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It does.

JOURNALIST: Is it not allowed for a Chinese buyer to buy that asset; is that completely ruled out just because of the like-minded foreign investors issue?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Probably got enough investment in Indonesia to be fair, I mean, from a commercial standpoint. But any FIRB decision is a matter taken project by project, so that would just be a wild speculation. But that is a really important asset and there’s been a lot of interest in it and I’m really glad we were able to work with BHP when they made their decision to make sure that it would be able to function in future. And as we do this work on markets, and nickel’s part of that as well, I expect that does provide other opportunities. Also these facilities can be repurposed; they’re valuable ground field sites that will never be reproduced in the way they were built when they were built in the '50s. So, you can see the value from that perspective. And I just note on the nickel side of things that oversupply has affected even our biggest competitor in Indonesia, who has had to hold back their production because the price has been so badly affected in the negative sense.

JOURNALIST: (On CCS) What will be – so you give verbal support? But, devil’s advocate, doesn’t seem like the Albanese Government is giving any actual policy support. Am I wrong?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Not policies, we are giving policy support in terms of the regulatory reform, the support through the future gas strategy, acknowledgement that it’s absolutely 100 percent required to reach net zero along with every other tool. And that’s when I was interrupted by a protester, I was trying to make the point, CCS is not – and I said this – it’s not a silver bullet but it’s a really important part of a suite of technologies that will be required. But the gas, oil and gas industry is an industry that knows the geology, the technology we’re talking about better than anyone else. So they will be the ones that, indeed, are making these projects happen, and as they are required and called under the safeguard mechanism that Professor Cook mentioned, it’s only natural that they put their private investment into that industry as opposed to government pitching in to that when we have a constrained budget, clearly.

JOURNALIST: Queensland have effectively banned CCS through their Great Artesian Basin work. Here in Victoria, the Japanese were willing to put 2 billion into that coal-to-hydrogen project, which seems to be stopped because of state government concerns. Are the states’ room for improvement in this?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, I mean, the states have to make their own decisions. But, you know, importantly, other states can see the potential. And if you enable CCS on shore with all the rigour around the environmental side of things and being assured of your water supply and so forth, then that presents an opportunity for that state to attract investment. And that’s what states want. So, if a state chooses to not go down that path and block off that investment, well, that is totally a matter for them.

JOURNALIST: Okay. Thank you.