This week, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles will travel to Europe for separate ‘2+2’ meetings with their French and British counterparts. Wong will also head to Brussels to meet the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell. And Marles will travel on from Europe to Washington to meet US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

This visit is timely. The coalition effort to arm Ukraine has stepped up ahead of offensives anticipated in the northern hemisphere’s spring. Closer to home, Marles is expected to make significant announcements on the future of AUKUS and Australian defence policy in March.

With so much in play, each leg of this trip risks becoming dislocated and overly focused on the bilateral relationship at hand. Wong and Marles should strive to identify common threads connecting these relationships and their place within the wider strategic picture.

One strategic thread is AUKUS.

Part of Marles’ time with his British and US counterparts will be set over to the forthcoming announcement of the pathway towards Australian nuclear-powered submarines. But the AUKUS subs are unlikely to be the all-encompassing topic some expect. High-level discussions are probably more collegiate and less in the weeds of design options for the vessels than pundits like to imagine.

Beyond AUKUS, the focus on ‘modernising’ the Australia–UK relationship resonates with ‘operationalising’ the Australia–US alliance, which outgoing Australian ambassador in Washington Arthur Sinodinos said was the theme of the AUSMIN 2+2 in December. The logic is compelling: the world has changed, so Australia’s closest partnerships must evolve to deliver tangible outcomes at increased tempo.

The sequencing of these dialogues is important, as France—and Europe as a whole—has a stake in AUKUS, despite not being party to it.

Given the sense of betrayal left by the original AUKUS announcement that saw the dumping of the French Attack-class submarines, Australian ministers will feel obliged to brief French counterparts about the latest developments. There is a lot at stake for Canberra, including cooperation in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and trilaterally with India. Thankfully, the foreign minister’s media release augurs well, saying that the Australia–France 2+2 aims to ‘progress works towards a bilateral roadmap’. This might become the centrepiece of President Emmanuel Macron’s expected visit to Australia later this year. Further out, and with different branding, it might even be possible to include France in some of the advanced technologies under AUKUS’s so-called pillar two.

Despite improving relations, France’s initial outrage still taints some European views of AUKUS, as I heard when visiting Brussels last week. Wong’s meeting with Borrell is an opportunity to straighten out the record. But there’s no substitute for sustained engagement across European capitals. At the heart of EU and NATO decision-making are their member states, acting through the European Council and the North Atlantic Council respectively. Not all roads lead to Brussels when Canberra seeks to influence EU and NATO policy.

Which segues to the second strategic thread: the growing linkages between Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.

There is already broad and growing consensus among friends on this point. Wong, Marles and their British and French counterparts can probably all agree with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that China must learn the right lessons from Ukraine—namely that smaller countries, like Taiwan, can be expected to defend themselves rigorously and attract support for their defence, and that aggression will be collectively punished, including through sanctions and the redirection of trade and investment. The 2+2 joint statements should be explicit about the strategic implications of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Marles and Wong can point to Australia’s support for Ukraine as evidence that Canberra is putting resources behind its interpretation of interconnected regions. Australian pledges to Ukraine—now approaching half a billion US dollars, mainly in military materiel—remain the most generous of any country outside the Euro-Atlantic, when viewed as a percentage of GDP. Today, members of the Australian Defence Force are in Britain training Ukrainian troops through Operation Interflex. Canberra is also playing a leading role building international cooperation on economic security and resilience against coercion. These are relevant to hybrid threats in domains like cyber where proximity and national or regional boundaries are less significant.

Britain and France also appreciate regional strategic connectivity. They have made similar contributions to Ukraine in monetary terms, although Britain arguably deserves more credit for galvanising allies, as shown recently by the Tallinn Pledge and early announcement of main battle tank transfers. Both countries also seem committed to their Indo-Pacific strategies and the resource commitments they entail. And both are building Indo-Pacific partnerships and interoperability, including the recent signing of a UK–Japan reciprocal access agreement, which follows a similar agreement between Canberra and Tokyo.

Some in Europe are already thinking more ambitiously. The chairman of the UK parliamentary defence select committee, Tobias Ellwood, has called for Britain and France to join a NATO-like arrangement that encompasses a range of Indo-Pacific countries, including all members of the Quad. That’s a bridge too far. It overlooks the historical preference for looser institutions and minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific. The NATO comparison would also play into the hands of Chinese propagandists.

A more subtle and suitable approach would be to build on NATO’s existing engagement with its four Asia–Pacific partners (known as the AP4): Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. Reflecting concerns about China raised in NATO’s 2022 strategic concept, these links are already growing on a country- and issue-specific basis. The AP4 leaders attended the 2022 NATO summit in Madrid and are expected to be invited again to this year’s summit in July in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Marles and Wong cannot meet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg while they’re in Europe because—to illustrate the point about regional connectivity—he’s visiting South Korea and Japan this week to discuss topics like emerging and disruptive technologies.

Even so, Marles and Wong could sound out their French and British counterparts about expanding the AP4 into an Indo-Pacific format. Such a format could seek to engage a wider range of countries, notably India. This wouldn’t imply any sort of new collective security arrangement. Rather, an ‘IP5’ could be a platform to discuss key shared concerns, like post-Ukraine approaches to effective deterrence, without obligation or institutional lock-in.

The challenges we face in the era of the China–Russia ‘no limits’ partnership—including Ukraine, Taiwan and borderless hybrid threats—can only be confronted by re-coupling our regions. Marles and Wong should weave that strategic thread through their trip to Europe.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is heading to Papua New Guinea this week for an annual leaders’ dialogue—his first overseas trip for 2023, and the first time an Australian prime minister has visited PNG since 2018 (due more to political turmoil there and the Covid-19 pandemic than to anything else). Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape are no strangers—they met several times last year—and the Australian government is describing this trip as one to reinforce the strong bond between the two countries.

The relationship between Australia and PNG is a unique one. PNG is Australia’s nearest neighbour, with less than four kilometres separating the countries at their closest point. Historically, the two countries have been strongly linked—from traditional trade across the Torres Strait through to colonial rule and then independence. Now, they have a deep diaspora connection and maintain shared values and close ties.

In 2019, then–prime minister Scott Morrison and Marape announced ‘the beginning of a new chapter’ in the bilateral relationship and committed to boosting engagement in security, trade and investment, governance and development. An enhanced comprehensive strategic and economic partnership agreement was signed in 2020. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles visited PNG in October, elevating already significant defence cooperation and pursuing a bilateral security treaty, which is being negotiated.

Australia’s relationship with PNG is in a very strong position. We’re already ‘family’. But to keep it that way, we have to stick around and be supportive. Strengthened ties should be balanced with effective development. What comes out of these meetings—for trade, the economy, infrastructure, defence and security, and climate change—should build on Australia’s commitment to foster PNG’s resilience, support its key areas of concern, and strengthen mutual friendship, trust and capabilities.

Australia provides more aid to PNG than to anywhere else in the Pacific. Because of the size of its population, that has always made sense. And late last year, a UN study suggested that PNG’s population could be as high as 17 million, nearly double the government’s estimate of 9 million. Marape admitted that he doesn’t know the exact size, and PNG is ill-equipped to deal with its population regardless of how many millions more there may be. Marape’s dreams of PNG becoming ‘the richest black Christian nation in the world’ are far from becoming a reality, and he recognises that.

PNG’s 20-year development strategic plan seeks, among other things, human development—through education, health care, economic opportunity and increased service delivery to rural areas, all of which Australia is supporting. And, importantly, PNG’s development goals seek to enhance national sovereignty and self-reliance. So, Australia’s responsibility is as much about building national resilience, government functions and a strong economy as it is about direct aid.

Yet Australia’s national and regional security concerns, while they impact PNG, are not always synonymous with the major security issues PNG faces day to day. Through its defence cooperation program, Australia assists the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, training its personnel, funding its infrastructure and supporting its ability to provide capabilities such as maritime domain awareness and border security. Further flashy offerings—like air capabilities—while nice additions for PNG’s security, don’t target the ongoing internal security needs of the country. And although the Australian Federal Police’s work with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary bolsters its capability and capacity, that alone doesn’t tackle the growing list of security issues.

Tribal warfare, land disputes, forced migration, gender-based and domestic violence, and sorcery-related violence all contribute to a deeply unstable security environment and stifle PNG’s development. These security issues have probably been exacerbated by population growth. Increasingly disruptive climate impacts may also have contributed, and these problems we be more difficult to resolve as climate change intensifies in the years to come. There’s no immediate solution to these issues, and PNG has to be at the forefront of addressing them. Australia’s focus should be on building the country’s sovereign capacity to deal with these issues as self-sufficiently as possible.

We almost can’t talk about the Pacific without referencing the geostrategic competition in the region. China’s presence in the Pacific, and particularly in the security domain—historically dominated by Australia, New Zealand, the US and France—causes the heart rates of Pacific partners to rise every few weeks. Pacific islands’ autonomy and receptivity is often overlooked in the face of China’s gifts and economic prowess. But, if the West is in a battle against China for influence in the Pacific, we have no greater stronghold than PNG.

Australia’s very public status as PNG’s key security partner, and the deep ties on all levels of the two countries’ engagement, doesn’t preclude China from engaging—and nor should we expect it to. Marape has made it clear that he doesn’t want to take sides, and his country needs trade with China to sustain its economy and development assistance to sustain its booming population.

But Australia’s engagement does help PNG to feel secure that it has what it needs, which makes it confident to only take what it wants from China, whether it be aid, development assistance, trade or sometimes security infrastructure and equipment. And PNG has so far proven that it knows how to accept what it wants while maintaining its sovereign ability to make its own decisions in its national interest. PNG doesn’t need, or indeed want, deep security ties with China—due probably in large part to Australia’s cooperation and partnership. And the security engagement it does have with China—equipment donations and subpar infrastructure—don’t make for a lasting relationship.

Albanese’s trip should focus on PNG’s priorities for its development, through the economy and service delivery. Australia should focus on building PNG’s capacity and resilience—for its internal security challenges, its development goals and its response to climate change impacts. Deeper defence cooperation, and a furthering of the move towards a bilateral security agreement, should also be priorities—as our nations’ strategic security is intrinsically linked.

Australia’s strong ties with PNG are important. But, in the long run, dependency won’t support PNG’s development. Australia has a fine line to walk between helping and hindering, and it must make PNG part of the solution instead of dragging it along for the ride. The prime minister’s trip should aim to keep our friend close and help it soar.

After their latest AUSMIN talks, Australia’s defence and foreign ministers and their US equivalents noted that the alliance and partnership had never been stronger or more vital to regional peace and prosperity. They resolved to evolve their countries’ defence and security cooperation to ensure they’re equipped to deter aggression, to counter coercion and to make space for sovereign decision-making.

This is a far cry from the mindset immediately after World War II. Australia’s engagement in that conflict had been deep. We were one of the most mobilised belligerents of the war and the main supplier to the South West Pacific Area command for much of it, and of personnel to General Douglas MacArthur’s forces until 1944. But we were viewed globally as a secondary zone. We’d been the ‘last bastion’, but the line rapidly receded.

We learned that, in the war’s aftermath, vigorous efforts by Ben Chifley’s government to secure a joint base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and defence agreements had withered on American indifference. During the Berlin airlift and then the Korean War, Australia and the US were mutually engaged, but Australia not prominently. When it came to ANZUS, the US joint chiefs resisted the treaty. When the agreement became inevitable, they ensured it involved no joint command or deep military engagement. For the State Department, ANZUS was to ensure Canberra’s support for a Japanese peace treaty. For the military now planning around the focal points of the Cold War—Europe, North Asia and the Middle East—Australia was geographically and strategically irrelevant.

The 1960s saw a major adjustment, symbolised in 1962 by Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s trip to Australia for the ANZUS Council meeting, the first held outside the US. That reflected growing American concerns with Vietnam and put the hitherto strategically less significant Southeast Asia in American focus. Badly burned by his country’s ongoing involvement in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon, however, restored the region’s previously lower level of significance in 1969 with his Guam doctrine. Australia was effectively enjoined to look to its own defences in the first instance.

Less noticed at the time was the development of a heightened enmeshment of Australian geography with the central balance. As Defense Secretary Robert McNamara enhanced the US triad of nuclear-force platforms, he recognised a critical need for southern hemisphere bases. Pine Gap, North West Cape and Nurrungar became, as the late Des Ball described them, the ‘strategic essence of the US alliance’.

In the 1980s, the logical consequence of these shifts came to be reflected in our defence strategy—self-reliance within the framework of the alliance. Our strategy and force posture were based solely on our capacity to deal with assessed threats by using our ‘force in being’. We determined that we needed to be able to defend ourselves without taxing the US. Pine Gap and Nurrungar were made genuinely joint as the US sought to strengthen its permanence and we situated them in our order of battle. We moved to take over North West Cape.

We were still not central to main American concerns. I recollect Ronald Reagan’s defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger, saying to me: ‘I have to wind up this conversation, Kim. The German defence minister is here, and he is a real intellectual challenge. I have to prepare!’

The end of the Cold War brought an era of peace dividends in defence spending in America and among its allies—disastrously, I would argue, in our case. That was amended after 2001 by the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US, which led to an overwhelming focus on militant Islamic fundamentalism. This incorporated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more broadly global terrorist activities. The period did, however, see the negotiation of additional space-related joint facilities from 2010.

Everything changed with the emergence of an economically and militarily competitive China, particularly its militarising of the South China Sea with its island base building, arguments over islands with Japan and South Korea, and the possibility of a military conclusion to the one-China policy with regard to Taiwan. The ‘war on terror’ has now been downgraded in priority. The struggle in Ukraine distracts from the picture. It has brought some American forces back to Europe, but the US has struggled to keep its main engagement as the provision of supplies and intelligence and the imposition of sanctions on Russia. This conflict is highly dangerous and carries the possibility of a broader war. The US is desperately hopeful it can be concluded without spreading. The war’s consequences are immensely costly to the global and European economies and to vital American military supplies.

Which brings us to AUSMIN 2022. The first thing to note is a much more realistic appreciation by the US of the limits of its own capabilities. When I was ambassador to Washington, administration officials would get very annoyed if we failed to describe the US as the pre-eminent power in the Northwest Pacific. That tonality has changed. The US now seeks deterrence through its close interrelationship with militarily effective allies. Diplomatically it seeks the emergence in our region of good relationships with a multiplicity of nations in the main through common views on issues like climate change, food security, infrastructure, natural emergencies and economic prosperity. The AUSMIN communiqué reflects this.

The military dimension, however, is heavily focused on Australia and Japan and the extent to which our military capabilities can be added to those of the US. While AUKUS has much in it about joint research on a wide variety of high-end military technologies, it is driven by Australia’s desire for a nuclear-powered submarine. Underwater is where the Americans hold an edge. In nuclear submarines the US outweighs China, at the moment, by a substantial margin. The US doesn’t want Australia to lose its conventional submarine capability, especially not before it can be replaced by nuclear submarines. It doesn’t want Australia to go to the expense of having to replace its conventional fleet while moving to nuclear submarines. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US ‘will not allow Australia to have a capability gap going forward’.

Geographically, Australia is now critical for the first time since World War II. Darwin is closer to the South China Sea than it is to Melbourne. It’s interesting for me to see the facilities we built for the self-reliant defence of our approaches under the 1987 defence white paper come into our ally’s strategic focus. The army to Darwin; submarines and surface vessels to HMAS Stirling; the US Air Force to use the bare bases Scherger, Curtin and Learmonth in northern Australia.

The AUSMIN statement goes quite granular on this, detailing enhanced land cooperation and combined logistics alongside the existing initiatives announced in 2011.

Priority locations will be identified for rotations of US air, land and maritime capabilities, which will support ‘enhanced US force posture with associated infrastructure, including runway improvements, parking aprons, fuel infrastructure, explosive ordinance storage infrastructure, and facilities to support the workforce’. This will include Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, where facilities for six B-52 long-range bombers are being developed. At selected bases, land forces would include US army elements with the marines, and Japan would be ‘invited to increase its participation in force posture initiatives in Australia’.

There was much in the communiqué on enhancing Australian technological capability, particularly our guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise, with the US committed to maintain, repair and overhaul more priority munitions in Australia to improve stock holdings.

A picture builds of substantial changes to Australian forward-basing facilities in the maritime, air and land domains. If all this occurs quickly, Australia’s defence will look very different. This is full circle. It embeds the US in Australia. Though the American presence is rotational, adjustment in wartime would be immediate.

The statement includes a great deal about joint diplomatic activity in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. This is Guam doctrine no more. We are not in an area of lesser significance. If not distracted elsewhere, the US now sees us as a focal point of its strategic interests.

On 6 December, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles met with their US counterparts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for the annual Australia – United States Ministerial Consultations, or AUSMIN, held this year in Washington DC.

In addition to the four principals, the Australian and US delegations included senior defence, intelligence and foreign policy officials. This tendency towards a security focus is born out of AUSMIN’s origins in the ANZUS Treaty, which established ‘a Council, consisting of [the parties’] Foreign Ministers or their Deputies, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty’. The first bilateral meeting held under the auspices of AUSMIN was in 1985, following the United States’ 1985 suspension of its security commitment to New Zealand for refusing port access to US nuclear submarines.

It was therefore interesting to see the most recent AUSMIN joint communiqué commit to ‘establishing a regular meeting between the Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific and US Agency for International Development Administrator to support closer development cooperation throughout the Indo-Pacific region and globally’. Given the alignment in the two countries’ ‘political will and strategic visions’ for foreign aid, it makes sense to hold regular high-level dialogue between development leaders. But, recognising that development is central to the international relations and security aspirations of AUSMIN, such discussions shouldn’t remain discrete. There’s a clear case for the consultations to become 3D—that is, to elevate development alongside diplomacy and defence by including both countries’ most senior development representatives.

The joint statement identifies a litany of global and regional issues and challenges for Australia and the US to cooperate on. In the first paragraph alone, both countries commit ‘to advanc[e] a stable, rules-based international order’, ‘strengthen and reform the multilateral system … to address the climate crisis’, and ‘protect and promote human rights … and advance the rules of the road for technology, cyberspace, trade, and commerce’. Development already plays a key role in delivering on a number of these goals; aside from the obvious human security benefits of development assistance, Australia’s aid program also supports regional cyber and climate resilience, for example. But few if any of these goals fit a purely development, diplomacy or defence categorisation, and achieving them will require coordination across the policy communities—each of which brings unique capabilities, perspectives and experiences that are essential but alone inadequate.

It’s evident that each country recognises this and is working to reconfigure its foreign policy toolkit in response. In Australia there’s been a growing appreciation among senior politicians, policymakers and officials of the need to respect, resource and coordinate all the arms of statecraft in the context of a more challenging environment. Wong has stressed that ‘[f]oreign policy must work with other elements of state power to succeed’, while Marles wants to ‘marshal and integrate all arms of national power to achieve Australia’s strategic objectives’.

This rhetoric is slowly being translated into reality: the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Office of the Pacific was established in 2019 with a mandate ‘to enhance whole-of-government coordination and to drive implementation of [Australia’s] regional activities’, and the terms of reference for Australia’s new international development policy declare that it ‘will be whole-of-government and outline the use of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and non-ODA to advance a peaceful, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific, alongside Australia’s diplomatic, economic, defence, and security engagement’.

The US has similarly honed in on diplomacy and development as key assets that complement and work in concert with defence; the US Global Fragility Act , for example, emphasises the shaping role each can play to help prevent conflict and instability and reduce the need for a defence response. This dynamic was pithily captured in 2013 by then–defence secretary Jim Mattis: ‘If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.’

The Biden administration’s 2022 national security strategy is explicit in saying it ‘encompasses all elements of national power—diplomacy, development cooperation, industrial strategy, economic statecraft, intelligence, and defense’ in pursuit of goals almost verbatim to those in the AUSMIN Joint Statement. The 2022 national defence strategy likewise outlines the concept of ‘[i]ntegrated deterrence [which] means using every tool at the Department’s disposal, in close collaboration with our counterparts across the US Government and with Allies and partners’.

There’s clearly an appetite among US and Australian policymakers for more joined-up thinking when it comes to formulating and prosecuting foreign policy, and bringing the development portfolio into AUSMIN would align with the integration agendas of both countries. Having the Australian development minister and USAID administrator in the room would be a powerful signal to their respective bureaucracies that such an approach is here to stay and to maintain momentum. As well as enhancing cooperation and coordination on shared interests and specific challenges, a 3D AUSMIN would open up opportunities to have conversations and share lessons on how to implement, operationalise and align whole-of-government statecraft more broadly.

Australia didn’t have a minister for international development when AUSMIN was established almost 40 years ago, and development has traditionally been an underdone aspect of the US–Australia alliance (as Marles recognised in July). But with aid emerging as a focus for both governments amid a more challenging strategic environment that demands smarter statecraft, now is the time to bring development into the AUSMIN fold.

The global markets for rare-earth elements and critical minerals are shaping to be the next economic hot zone for the Chinese Communist Party—and for Australia’s security.

Japan recognised the economic vulnerability created by China’s near monopolistic control of these markets more than a decade ago when the CCP restricted Japan’s access to rare earths during a dispute between two countries over the Senkaku Islands.

In contrast, awareness is only now gathering pace in Australia, the US, Canada and other like-minded nations. The challenge ahead for these countries is to work together to create secure supply and value chains by supporting investment, building infrastructure and helping the sector to identify and lock in customers.

Already, Beijing appears to have recognised that the tentative steps other countries are taking could unravel its coercive power in the sector. In a breathtaking moment of hypocrisy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said last month: ‘No one should use the economy as a political tool or weapon, destabilise the global industrial and supply chains or punch the existing world economic system.’

Even before Xi Jinping came to power, Chinese companies recognised the strategic and economic importance of rare earths and critical minerals. Low labour costs, indifference to the environmental impacts of mineral processing, and the rest of the world dropping the ball while focusing on other issues allowed Beijing to achieve global dominance of these markets, with almost 80% control of rare earths and up to 94% of other critical minerals like magnesium. Beijing’s increased state control of Chinese companies has further armed it with a suite of coercive economic levers.

Japan has led the way in responding to this market control, including by investing in Australian rare-earth company Lynas, which should provide confidence in an alternative, resilient supply chain.

Better late than never, the rest of us are catching up. In February, Washington announced actions to bolster the supply chain for rare earths and other critical minerals to reduce dependence on China. This was followed by US government investments in onshore processing of heavy rare earths.

In June, Lynas signed a US$120 million contract with the US Department of Defense to build a commercial facility in Texas for separating heavy rare earths.

Canada has also begun addressing the issue, announcing last month that any foreign state-owned enterprise looking to purchase Canadian assets in the sector could be subject to a comprehensive review to ensure the purchase is not ‘injurious to national security’. This effective national interest test reverses the default towards investment and short-term company profit and instead prioritises Canada’s security and sovereignty.

And by ordering divestiture by foreign investors in three Canadian critical mineral companies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has made it clear that this is a new economic security approach, not a rhetorical warning.

In Australia, former PM Scott Morrison’s government set some foundations for growing Australia’s critical minerals sector and expanding downstream processing, and followed up with a $1.25 billion loan through the Critical Minerals Facility to Australian company Iluka Resources to set up the country’s first integrated rare-earths refinery, moving Australia up the sector’s value chain.

Last month, at a conference co-hosted by ASPI and the Australian National University, Resources Minister Madeleine King vowed to ‘make the most of the natural endowment we have of these resources so that we can provide an alternative source of them from China’.

The $50 million in grants that King announced in September to help Australia become a ‘global supplier’ of rare earths is a positive move, though the news that Australian ‘rare earths aspirant’ VHM Limited plans to sell 60% of its product to Chinese state-owned company Shenghe is a setback to plans to achieve strategic independence in rare earths.

Last week, the Albanese government announced it is considering ways to limit China’s investment and influence in Australia’s critical-minerals industry.

And there are opportunities well beyond Australia, Canada, the US and Japan. While the German government continues to find ways to misjudge the reality of the Russian and Chinese regimes, even Chancellor Olaf Scholz ahead of his ill-considered trade visit to Beijing said that ‘where risky dependencies have developed—for important raw materials, some rare earths or certain cutting-edge technologies, for example—our businesses are now rightly putting their supply chains on a broader footing. And we are supporting them in this, for example with new raw material partnerships.’ Australia must not miss this opportunity.

It’s a positive sign that so many like-minded countries, including Australia, are not just identifying that there’s a problem but are willing to take action. Sovereign resilience is beyond the reach of any one country. Now is the time for ‘minilateralism’ to take centre stage. Australia has an opportunity to provide the kind of leadership that will see Japan, Canada, the US and others create new mines, new midstream processing and new manufacturing of rare earths and critical minerals. These countries beginning the journey together will increase confidence of others, particularly in our near region, to join.

For years, the CCP has acted outside the market to maintain its level of control of the sector. Piecemeal efforts pose little trouble to Beijing, but a growing sense of open, liberal societies working together has it worried, which is why it is doing what it can to stifle collective action.

Some observers will continue to argue that governments must stay out of the free market. But this merely means that governments like Australia’s stay out while the Chinese and Russian regimes consolidate control.

Market forces won’t, on their own, provide economic resilience and a secure supply chain. Collectively, we can provide a viable, competitive alternative market that offers products through supply chains that are secure from domestic policy disruptions and economic coercion.

Without action, there will be no choices, no alternatives and no free market. In choosing not to act, Australia would effectively be choosing to become as dependent on Beijing for rare earths as Europe has been on Moscow for energy. The choice is still ours.