TOM CONNELL: We have heard a lot in the past year or two about rather earths, critical minerals. This is all to do with China’s dominance in this field, and many nations, including Australia and the US realising we do need to be able to have a steady supply of these. Australia, it’s always been thought, has a lot of them, but that hasn’t been certain.

Joining me live now is Resources Minister Madeleine King. Thank you for your time. So a government-led project is essentially mapping out, I guess you’d say, where these might be and how much. What has it found so far?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Thanks, Tom. It’s great to be with you here from Perth. So the Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity program is a long-term investment by the Albanese Labor Government in Geoscience Australia to do really important, pre-competitive geoscience to make sure we know exactly what we’re made of. And what we have found is that there’s very good prospects for more rare earths and critical minerals in some of the remote parts of Western Australia and Northern Territory. And that’s on the first sweep of this program, which has really got into gear over the past year and done some really important work. And it’s all about building our long-term future for Australia, for diversifying our economy and making sure we can make the most of those natural resources that are so valuable to Australia but also to the world.

TOM CONNELL: So what’s your – from the initial, you know, mapping, is it too early to say how much we might have, what sort of minerals we’ll have the most of? When would you get an idea for that?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, well, there’s still got to be more exploration done. What we now right now is Australia holds all those minerals and metals that we need to go into batteries and defence applications. And this is about finding more of them. So this is what we call pre-competitive data research. So what happens is Geoscience Australia does the underlying research. It will be published and it will be part of the public comment. So anyone can look at this, and that then sparks private investment to do further investigation into those potential deposits. So we kind of give everyone a bit of a part on where best to look for more deposits, and then we let the private sector put in their money to go and find more of these things.

TOM CONNELL: Okay. Yeah, so they get a strong hint, I guess, and then away they go. So reports out of the US, Donald Trump could be moving away from a price floor on critical minerals. This, of course, matters because in the past China can just lower the price artificially, run it as a loss leader and make sure they dominate production and discovery of critical minerals. Have you been told anything about this? Is this going to happen? Has the Trump administration let you in on it?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, we know from what we’ve seen in the reports, and we will let that play out. And every country has its own restraints on government spending and how that happens. And in America they have some issues with getting certain things through Congress, which we’ve seen elevated over a number of years now. That won’t stop Australia pursuing our Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve program to make sure Australia has access to the resources it needs to build a future made in Australia.

And as I announced not that long ago, we’ve already – we’ve chosen the focus and the first sort of wave of the reserve, if you like, on antimony and gallium and rare earths, and that’s about securing our national security. And that will – that does contemplate price floors. And we expect other nations to invest in our reserve, which will be for the benefit of Australia’s resources but also for their supply chains as well.

TOM CONNELL: So whatever happens under the scheme you’ve announced, the price would exist, even if it had to be Australian Government money pumped into it? Is that the sort of backup if the US does do what’s been reported?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, the US has introduced a price floor for one particular project, and that’s the only one it has done it for. And that was a game changer, I might add. It really has set people thinking about the determination we have to have to invest in this industry and to build out a critical minerals industry. So I really applaud the US Government for their investment in the Mountain Pass project.

We have been thinking along the same lines for some time, and that’s why we announced the reserve in the election and have now done the work through the taskforce to build it. So when I say we will have a floor price, we’ll have a number of mechanisms. A floor price will be one through offtake agreements, but the main thing and the main thing everyone watching should be really aware of is that we are determined to make sure there is value for taxpayer money in the reserve and in any floor price. We want tax funds, Australia’s taxpayers’ hard earned to get, you know, the upside as well as when they support this industry getting off the ground.

TOM CONNELL: All right. Interesting. So not a cost to the taxpayer from the sound of that. Labor environment group, it’s known as LEAN, it’s starting a grassroots campaign. It wants to get rid of what is known as the fuel credit scheme that essentially big mining companies are the beneficiaries of. Is this something you’re considering?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I want to be really clear – we are not considering any changes to the fuel credit scheme. We’ve made our position very clear on this.

TOM CONNELL: Okay. So no matter how popular this gets amongst the Labor rank and file, you’re telling them right now, “You’re wasting your time”?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, no-one wastes their time, Tom. I mean, people are really entitled to share their views with me –

TOM CONNELL: Well, it’s not going to get the result. If you won’t listen to them, it’s a waste of time, isn’t it?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, no. Well, we’re not contemplating any changes to the scheme. And it’s really important to understand what that scheme does. And sometimes I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding on that. So every motorist that has an internal combustion engine in their car fills up their car with petrol or diesel or whatever it is that they have to put in. And that is to pay for public roads – for building them and maintaining them. And then, there is other parts of our economy, like farmers and massive agricultural enterprises, mining companies, tourism operators and many others that also use fuel in vehicles, whether they be trucks, trains, harvesters, you name it. And all of those vehicles don’t use the public roads. So they use roads that those companies have spent their own money building and maintaining. And that’s why that credit scheme exists, because they are not using the public roads that the fuel excise pays for. So that’s the Reasoning and the logic behind the scheme.

TOM CONNELL: Yeah, so you’d never reduce it to encourage transition to electric vehicles, for example, or electrification in general, to get what they need done?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, I mean, in the mining industry they are going, you know, full flog into trying to electrify. So I know certainly Roy Hill are investing in electrifying their rail infrastructure, and so is Rio Tinto and BHP, and, of course, we always here about Fortescue’s efforts in this regard. So all of these – and they’re the big players, and there are smaller players are well.

TOM CONNELL: Okay.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: They’re expending a lot of effort, a lot of science and research on making sure they are lowering their emissions as well. And that’s really important work. And I think we should all, you know, have a look at the work they’re doing, because they’ve been world-loading on this in Australia.

TOM CONNELL: Madeleine King, appreciate your time today. Thank you.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Thanks, Tom. Good to talk.