NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Minister, hello. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Hi, how are you going, Nadia. I’m coming to you from Washington tonight. It’s fantastic to be here and quite the opportunity. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And thank you very much for giving us a bit of time. So could you tell us about today’s announcement? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, today the Prime Minister and I out the front of the White House announced that we would be extending the critical minerals facility by $2 billion. So we’re doubling the amount that’s available under that facility from 2 up to $4 billion, which will be available to critical minerals and rare earths projects right across the country. It’s an important initiative for Australia to be able to provide low-risk finance into what is – can be a risky environment for finance but, importantly, the critical minerals and rare earths it will support are those things that are vital for our transition to net zero. So that’s what it’s all about, and we’re here talking to our US counterparts about working together on a number of projects in relation to this. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: What are the opportunities here, particularly for Western Australia? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, for Western Australia the opportunities are absolutely enormous. We have unique geology, and in Western Australia, we also have widespread support for what we’re trying to do. So, so many people that each of us know work in the resources sector and we have the great expertise of the traditional resources sector, of iron ore and gold and other commodities. And that can all be transferred into opportunities in critical minerals. So that – it’s an important opportunity we need to grasp, and the government is acting to make sure we’re able to. And part of the challenge the Critical Minerals Facility addresses is the challenging environment around critical minerals where the market can change really quickly and things can be devalued or manipulated, and so there’s a role for government to step in at those opportunities. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And what sort of minerals are we talking about here? I mean, what are the minerals that, you know, we can mine here in WA? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, there’s so many, but we’re talking about critical minerals principally, and there’s a number of them. Obviously, lithium is one that we hear about a lot, but there’s also graphite and cobalt as well, which is important. Manganese too, but also rare earths, which is a mineral sands and a combination of things, but in processing of rare earths is really complex, energy-intensive and it takes a lot of resources to make sure you process those rare earths correctly. So there’s a lot of different minerals, but we’re playing to our advantageous here with lithium at the moment. But there will be more. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: On ABC Radio Perth in WA I’m speaking to the Resource Minister Madeleine King, who is talking to you this morning from Washington. So when we – how necessary is this given we are moving to electrification and how urgent is this? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, well the thing is we need all these critical minerals and the rare earths to enable electrification. So we will not get to net zero without the Western Australian resources sector. And that’s not just Australia getting to net zero – the world needs our critical minerals. So that’s just to make it really clear how important our geology is to the rest of the world and decarbonising it so we can address dangerous climate change. So, you know, the rare earths that are held by Iluka are one of the things that the critical minerals facility supported, but also in graphite, EcoGraf is another company in Western Australia that is working on that. But then there’s also a lot of support from other facilities around lithium and lithium hydroxide plants, and they’ll be the materials that go into the lithium ion batteries that we all want and need for car batteries but general battery storage and all sorts of things. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: So is WA on the cusp of another mining boom? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: A hundred per cent. It absolutely is. But it’s a different mining boom. So it’s not the vast volumes of commodities we see with iron ore. You know, we’ve got those trains that are kilometres long and, you know, BHP has just had its 3 billionth tonnes shipped to China. It’s not going to be on that scale of volume, and therein is part of the challenge. But it will be a lot of different mines in a lot of different places and a concentration of processing facilities to make sure we make more of these things here and do more of the processing in Australia and then exporting that as opposed to the raw ores. And that’s an important part of the value-adding this government wants to achieve. But also our partners in the US that we’ve been speaking to, they also want us to make sure we lean into that as well. Because the demand for lithium and battery-based – the minerals needed for batteries, the demand around the world is so high we’ll all need to work together to make it happen and make sure there’s a diversified supply chain for every country around the world. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And when we talk about this we obviously need to talk about renewables, because we need that renewable power capacity to be able to divide these minerals and these rare earths. Is that part of the equation here, an important part of the equation? 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, it’s – for renewables it’s a really important thing that we start to manufacture more solar panels in Australia. There’s not a solar panel in the world that doesn’t have some element of Australian intellectual property. Because we kind of invented this, but we let it go many years ago and we’ve kind of been beaten to that a bit. So we need to renew that industry. But the thing about minerals processing, whether it’s in lithium or rare earths, is it is energy intensive and it will need more than just renewables. That’s why our gas industry is so important as well, because the biggest growth in gas use in Western Australia is for minerals processing. And that’s why making sure our gas industry meets the targets under the Safeguard Mechanism and their own targets is going to be so important to make sure we do this responsibly. So we’re trying to create battery technology, green energy technology, but all of it has to be in a context of wanting to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and gas is going to be part of that story too, and a really important part. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And people listening will feel uncomfortable about that because you’re saying that at a time when climate experts are saying no more new fossil fuel projects. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, they shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about that because it is entirely necessary at the moment. There’s – nothing can displace the role gas plays in the processing of minerals at the moment. I’m not saying that might not happen with hydrogen and, as you know, the government has invested in the Hydrogen Headstart program, and that will be an entirely good thing if we can find that non-fossil fuel that can provide the heat and energy to achieve rare earths and critical minerals processing. But for the moment we can’t, and we also can’t stop processing critical minerals, because we need them to have the battery storage and the clean energy technology, whether it be magnets or wind turbines or lithium for batteries or graphite for batteries, vanadium for batteries, it doesn’t really matter which, we will still need that high energy that gas can provide. And that’s why the government’s commitment on the Safeguard Mechanism and making sure, you know, gas companies do all they can – and they have to or they’ll have a cost attached to their emissions, and that’s part of our commitment to net zero. And it also demonstrates why carbon capture and storage is so important to the overall story of even critical minerals but the gas that enables the processing of them. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: You mentioned carbon capture and storage. There’s been problems with that [indistinct] projects. What about our transition to renewables, because there is a concern that it’s too small. 

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: It’s such an enormous challenge, the transition to renewables. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, we can’t meet that challenge. And we have to. And this government is committed to doing that. But so is the state government and other state governments in the country as well. And, you know, we support the efforts of all the governments around the country to introduce more renewables. I mean, it’s our stated aim to be a renewable energy super power because we have so many advantages that other countries don’t, like the space that allows you to build these big solar arrays that can power things. But – and that will be, you know, very important. 

Offshore wind is a new aspect of renewable energy. But it faces its own challenges as well, which we will meet, but we must, you know, understand that we can’t create an offshore wind, you know, capacity overnight; it’s going to take a lot of planning. And it’s starting now, but we’re 10 years behind after that, you know, basically a decade of denial by the former government. But, you know, I don’t want to dwell on that; I just want to focus on how we can, you know, get renewables happening – and this government is doing that – but also make sure we are participating in the most of our geological advantages to make sure those resources are available for those green energy technologies. But everything has got to play its part in this, and I think it’s a good thing that more people understand the role each of our current resources will play in the green energy transition. 

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: I’ll leave it there. Appreciate your time, Minister.