Prime Minister and Resources Minister just announced “Investment To Unlock Potential Of Australia’s Critical Minerals Sector”. Quote “The measures, which are part of the 2022-23 Budget, include a $200 million Accelerator grants program, $50 million to support research and development and an updated industry strategy.”
For those not familiar with resources projects in the Wide Brown Land it is important to note that the STATES administer lands and licence mineral exploration and mining. The Fed. Govt. has power over exports and could block or put conditions on specific exports but that would be unusual. I can not quickly think of anything positive the Fed. Govt. has done for resources. The best and cheapest things the Feds could do of course would be to repeal some of the more stupid Green, Red and Indigenous tape they strangle projects with. Remember how Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill iron ore mine had to achieve more than 4,000 approvals, permits and licences, and more again for construction.
>”I can not quickly think of anything positive the Fed. Govt. has done for resources” [from opening comments]
Worse, Greg Hunt was Minister for Resources for a significant period. Hunt has a discernable pattern to his various Ministries and it is quite visible as he moves on.
That is, he always leaves a portfolio with the bureaucracy having aquired more power over funding, regulations and marketing than it had before he turned up.
Why was Canavan moved out of Cabinet, one asks.
Quote from OurABC – Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that a $1.17 billion nickel mine in WA’s Goldfields region will be fast-tracked, granting it national Major Project Status. It turns out this is the multi-decadal-gestating Laterite Nickel project once owned by the legendary Joseph Gutnick. Now owned by Ardea Resources ARL the project comprises “…830 million tonnes of ore grading 0.71 per cent nickel and 0.046 per cent cobalt.” Thats one hell of a lot of barren “wide-brown-land” dirt mixed in there, so calling it a “nickel mine” is a stretch of English usage. With the Ni price having just been inflated by failed short sellers and the Ukraine war sanctions affecting Russian supplies boosting Ni spot price, plus the always wildly partisan spruiking from renewables proponents – it is a difficult time to assess the long term prospects of laterite nickel. But no worries ScoMo advisors tell him, “jump in”. When an alt but less Glam option would have been to ask existing producers and miners of REAL Nickel & Cobalt – what can we Feds do to help your industries? I would like to be a fly on the wall to hear the replies.
Maybe Twiggy Forrest sold the idea to Morrison, after all he should know a thing or two about developing Laterite Nickel projects in WA?
It seems governments just can’t help themselves when it comes to picking technology favourites, meddling in hitherto orderly markets and strangling business with ever more red and green tape.
In my day the resources department was infamous among lefties in Canberra for being beholden to industry, for acting like a fifth column for evil mining companies in Cabinet discussions.
Oh, for those good old days! If they ever existed. Now the department does nothing but interfere, dither and bungle. Its bureaucrats don’t know how to do anything except give away millions of taxpayer dollars in return for thousands of pages of paperwork. When is this “Liberal” government going to learn that things happen when they get out of the road? And that those things are the best and most profitable uses of resources in the judgement of people who know what they are doing .