Recent efforts by Australia, Britain and the United States to harmonise their defence trade controls are welcome, if long overdue.

But there are reasons to worry that AUKUS Pillar 2 may be carved out of the very regulatory framework intended to facilitate it. This is a problem if the development of advanced capabilities is to be a truly collaborative effort.

Indeed, If AUKUS technologies cannot be insulated against long-standing issues associated with the reach of US defence export controls, Australian and British companies will continue to encounter longstanding disincentives to participating in advanced capability projects with the United States.

Granted, Australia would certainly benefit from these harmonisation efforts. The sum of the three countries’ respective export control reforms would see approximately 70 percent of defence trade made eligible for license-free movement between the three countries, fast-tracking everyday defence industrial cooperation between verified entities in Australia, Britain and the United States.

It has been a longstanding Australian objective to accelerate defence industrial integration with the United States. In that sense, these AUKUS-inspired reforms may yet succeed where previous efforts failed.

But, worryingly, the potential benefits for AUKUS technology collaboration are currently far less clear. This is due to two interrelated factors.

Firstly, AUKUS defence trade control harmonisation efforts should not be mistaken for fundamental reforms to the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

This is an essential distinction, given that the creation of an AUKUS platinum standard for export controls is premised on the comparability of Australian and the British defence trade controls to America’s own defence trade control regulations, including the ITAR. The explanatory memorandum accompanying Australia’s recently passed Defence Trade Control Amendment Bill makes that much clear.

Though the harmonisation efforts include licensing exemptions for each country from one another’s regulations, these are not blanket in coverage. This is crucial with respect to the ITAR, for what has been proposed in Washington are limited licensing exemptions for certified AUKUS entities, not fundamental reforms to many of the ITAR’s well-known flaws.

This means that those items not covered by the AUKUS exemption involving substantive US input will remain subject to the ITAR’s more problematic aspects, including extraterritorial jurisdiction and broad definitions of defence ‘articles’ or ‘services’. Particularly problematic is the so-called taint, arising from the use of American defence articles or services in joint capability development projects which requires operators or owners to acquire licenses from the State Department for defence articles made with certain US parts or knowledge, even when the final products are predominantly allied-made.

As detailed by former US ambassadors and charges d’affaires to Australia, the ITAR taint has historically created months of delays to routine repair work on US air force and naval assets in Australia, including by preventing easy transfer of even the most mundane of defence materials like bolts and screws.

But as William Greenwalt, former US undersecretary of defense for industry, and I wrote in our report on ITAR reform last year, the taint has also frequently seen US-origin defence material and services designed out of allies’ capabilities and supply chains. It has also prevented Australian companies from delivering made-to-order product variants for US war fighters, because they’ve  wanted to avoid risk of US regulatory capture due to the inclusion of what could be interpreted as US intellectual property.

This leads to the second factor: the scope of the excluded technologies list (ETL), a list of items and services ineligible for the so-called AUKUS exemption.

Comprising the 30 percent of intra-AUKUS defence trade not captured by the licensing exemption, the ETL is based on a combination of the three countries’ commitments to international non-proliferation regimes, particularly the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR; 25 percent), as well as national-level policy decisions not to make these technologies more freely available to AUKUS partners for legal or political reasons (5 percent).

Many of these technologies will be essential to the development of advanced capabilities through AUKUS Pillar 2. In fact, officials have presented the ETL as explicitly intended to capture Pillar 2 technologies, citing the need to safeguard shared capability advantages, though they have also stressed that these technologies remain attainable with an appropriate export license.

This is understandable, but still problematic. Put simply, the ETL in its current format could amount to the exclusion of AUKUS technologies from the AUKUS country exemption. This means that these technologies would remain subject to standard defence trade licensing requirements in all three countries—including the ITAR.

And that would mean that the well-known issues with US export controls would continue to apply to the very technologies which these regulatory harmonisation efforts were intended to minimise. The practical result would be that, even if more than 90 percent of componentry found in a future AUKUS advanced capability were eligible for a license waiver, the ITAR would still taint that capability if any of the remaining 10 percent of components were on the ETL and were US-made or featured notable US design input.

In the absence of structural reforms to the ITAR or further amendments to the contents of the ETL or the conditions for their transfer between users, the well-known problems associated with US defence trade controls would almost certainly continue to impede high-end defence technology cooperation. This is problematic if co-innovation and co-development leveraging the best technologies available from all three countries is a desirable end-state for AUKUS Pillar 2.

To be clear, defence trade control harmonisation is absolutely required. I have argued previously that developing trilateral protections is as essential as developing trilateral capabilities.

But without immunising the ETL against the ITAR taint, AUKUS risks moving slower than the speed of strategic relevance. Consider, for example, that the three countries trail their chief competitors in several Pillar 2 categories, such as hypersonics. Encouragingly, government officials working on AUKUS see the ETL as a starting point, while industry is also alert to the need to amend the ETL to facilitate both pillars (Pillar 1 being focused on nuclear submarines). Doing so is no enviable task, and will not be straightforward. For instance, reinterpreting the three countries’ obligations under the MTCR with respect to discrete technologies would be a heavy political lift, considering the three governments’ commitments to the highest non-proliferation standards and enduring negative perceptions across Asia of AUKUS Pillar 1 as a proliferation risk.

But realising the potential, and the spirit, of AUKUS will require creative thinking and a willingness to countenance greater risk-taking across the three systems. That approach must include in technology sharing, lest regulatory harmonisation efforts produce an arrangement that is AUKUS by country, not by technology.

The Australian Defence Force needs bold, creative initiatives to attract and keep enough personnel to reach expansion targets.

Ask Australians in their 20s what matters to them right now, and housing will rank high. The response from Defence should be ‘Well, do we have a deal for you.’

Defence should be making strikingly good housing offers.

There has been a lot of talk about innovative ways to attract the best Australian talent to Defence but not much action. At the Air and Space Power Conference in Canberra in May, Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty admitted that ‘attracting people to the ADF is proving challenging‘, and he tasked his department to ‘think really creatively‘. The 2024 National Defence Strategy also underlined this challenge, reinforcing the priorities laid out in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and announcing a workforce review to be tabled in 2025.

Part of the problem lies in the language used by uniformed and civilian leaders when discussing the issue: they don’t emphasise the enormity of the task.The ADF doesn’t just need to be competitive by the ordinary standards of the labour market; it must lead the competition at length. Jobseekers applying for a uniformed position are signing up to the possibility of losing their lives on the job, so they make decisions far more cautiously than those considering civilian employment.

Current salary and conditions from the ADF are clearly not persuasive enough in their weighty decision-making. The ADF needs something else to convince possible candidates for service.

The government has formerly made attractive housing offers to recruit the best talent to the ADF. In 1918 it established the War Service Homes Scheme, which helped servicemen who returned from World War I and later World War II and the Korean War. The government handed out Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits pensions to the baby boomers. And it launched the Home Purchase Assistance Scheme (HPAS), Home Purchase Sale and Expense Allowance (HPSEA) and the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme (DHOAS) for Generation X. These tangible benefits were decisively better than those offered by other potential employers.

The existing support schemes, however, are not enough to win over those currently considering a military career. The HPAS, HPSEA and DHOAS have not kept pace with the increases in cost of living or housing prices, and no longer provide a significant incentive to join the ADF.

Now, Defence needs to offer something more in its promise of housing support. It could provide super-cheap living-in accommodation, better and cheaper married quarters, increase rent allowance for those living off base, and increasing HPAS and DHOAS payments. These initiatives can be paid for with the salaries of the 5000 people whom the ADF has budgeted for but failed to recruit. The initiatives would also have second order effects of injecting more federal funds into construction and the property market.

Increasing the size of the ADF is a daunting problem when the unemployment rate is low and many industries are competing for the best talent. The ADF isn’t even in the same class as those industries. The perils of military service put it out on its own.

For the ADF to win over potential recruits, it needs creative ideas that would land a knockout blow on Millennials and Gen-Z. Give them what they want—strong support on housing—and it might just win them over.

Australians want a bold vision for their future economic prosperity. They want not just to create new opportunities but to align them with our values and international commitments, not the least of which is the clean energy transition. Critical minerals should be central to this vision, and dig-and-ship is no longer the answer. The government’s 2024–25 budget outlines the vision and commits new funding to it, but more is needed to address commercial, technological and economic fundamentals.

More will need to be done, and we’ll have to pay for it. The government should invest more broadly in the sector via small loans at the early stages of project development. Demand-side investments are also needed. One option is to pay for it by improving taxation of the oil and gas sector.

The budget is bullish on critical minerals, squarely locating them in the $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia program. The nation’s mineral sector will feature significant upstream and downstream mineral production and even end-use manufacturing: $836 million to the Solar Sunshot program and $549 million for battery manufacturing through to the early 2030s.

In that vision, Australia’s extractive sector is more complex, the sector dovetails into advanced domestic manufacturing, and our economy is better integrated with those of our Indo-Pacific partners. Australia would capture greater value from our natural resources, play a bigger role in the international clean energy transition and have a greener domestic economy.

The government is taking steps in the right direction—even if it’s uncertain whether Australia’s end-use manufacturing is viable—but we need to do more and to pay for it, particularly where we aim to compete against immense international industrial policies, such as the United States’ US$369 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

Central to the government’s critical minerals measures is the Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive, a 10 percent tax credit on processing and refining beginning in 2027. It will cost the government an estimated $7.0 billion over the next decade (and potentially $16 billion by 2040–41).

In any regular market, that incentive should create strong outcomes for some existing projects in lithium, nickel and rare earths that already integrate processing capacity. It should also attract greater capital investment and incentivise integrated domestic processing for future projects. And those projects are vital for the clean energy transition. For example, 90 percent of lithium demand in 2040 will be driven by clean energy technologies.

But this is a manipulated market. Subsidies alone won’t overcome the challenges facing the sector, and industry alone can’t overcome state-backed market manipulation.

In 2023–24, the government committed significant investments into major critical minerals projects ($400 million in loans to Alpha HPA; $840 million in loans and grants to the Arafura Nolans project) and conditionally approved $185 million in loans for Renascor’s Siviour graphite project (although that may be revised).

Those are huge loans, and we can expect only a few more in the near term. The budget indicates that the government’s critical minerals investment agencies—the Critical Minerals Facility, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and Export Finance Australia—are approaching their limits.

In a capital-intensive sector, the government has committed more than $1.2 billion to a small number of projects, but massive loans alone can’t build this sector and quickly diversify supply chains.

The government will need to invest more broadly through smaller loans at the earlier stages of project development. Those projects are riskier but could more quickly attract private capital. That would also link to other government initiatives, including $566 million in exploration funding and $182.7 million (over eight years) to speed up regulatory approvals.

On the demand side, we need to continue to invest in Australian end-user solar or battery industries (and research and development) and expand Australia’s integration into existing markets in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Notably, this budget commits $5.8 million to a critical minerals trade-enhancement initiative run by the Department of Industry Science and Resources and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Areas where government can commit to critical minerals investments in coming years are plentiful, but funding is not. To properly fund the Future Made in Australia policy, we must find a new source of serious revenue, and improving taxation of the oil and gas sector may be the best option.

As argued by the Australia Institute, Australia’s petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) is lacking compared with international standards. Many liquefied natural gas projects expect never to pay the tax. There is a counterargument here that the second-order impacts of LNG projects, including direct jobs and broader industry activity, compensate. But, at a time when we need to create resilient supply chains and invest in our future economic prosperity, someone must pay the bill.

Australia’s LNG exports generated $92.8 billion in revenue in 2023, up from previous years. However, the government expects to collect less PRRT this year than in previous or future years. Our LNG production tripled from 53 billion cubic metres in 2010 to 154 billion cubic metres in 2022, but we aren’t seeing commensurate economic or government revenue impacts. Other leading global LNG supplier nations, such as Qatar, collect far more from their oil and gas sectors.

Until recently, Australia has been an attractive destination for LNG investment, and we’re near to major customers—Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan. The government’s new Future Gas Strategy, which commits Australia to LNG through to 2050 and aims to reduce regulatory approval lag time, as well as the forthcoming revision of the National Hydrogen Strategy, are strong political signals that will counter growing concern about our regulatory environment.

The government’s vision for critical minerals and a Future Made in Australia boldly attempts to move Australia’s economy forward amid slowing global growth and recent domestic economic stagnation. Future budgets will need to build on that investment and identify new income sources to do so.

The nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines to be built under the AUKUS agreement are on track to be the world’s most advanced fighting machines, says Australian Submarine Agency Director-General Jonathan Mead.

‘They’ll have greater firepower, a more powerful reactor, more capability and they’ll be able to do more bespoke operations, including intelligence gathering, surveillance, strike warfare, special forces missions and dispatching uncrewed vessels, than our current in-service submarines,’ Vice Admiral Mead says in an interview.

With a displacement of more than 10,000 tonnes, the SSN-AUKUS class will be larger than current US Virginia-class attack submarine of just over 7000 tonnes. Australia’s six conventionally powered Collins-class submarines are each about 3300 tonnes.

The SSN-AUKUS submarines to be built for Australia and Britain, with help from the United States, will be a ‘bigger, better, faster and bolder’ evolution of Britain’s Astute-class submarines, Mead says. The design will have the advantage of more US technology and greater commonality with US boats.

Australian steel will be used to build Australia’s SSN-AUKUS submarines, subject to a comprehensive qualification process expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.

The steel is also being qualified to both the British and US standards. Having Australian industry involved will deepen and bring resilience to the three nations’ supply chains, with greater mass, confidence and scale, Mead says.

In April, major US warship builder Newport News Shipbuilding lodged an initial purchase order for processed Australian steel from Bisalloy Steel’s Port Kembla plant for testing and training.

The government has committed to having eight nuclear submarines, Mead says, ‘and we’re on track’.

‘We’re planning on three Virginias and five SSN-AUKUS. That takes the program through to 2054.’

The SSN-AUKUS submarines built by Australia and Britain will be identical, incorporating technology from all three nations, including cutting-edge US technologies.

Those for the Royal Australian Navy will all be built at Osborne in South Australia. ‘Osborne will be the fourth nuclear-powered submarine shipyard among the three countries and one of the world’s most advanced technology hubs,’ Mead says.

The SSNs will all have an advanced version of the AN/BYG-1 combat system, used in the Collins class and in US submarines, and the Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo, an advanced version of which has been developed by the United States and Australia.

Mead says each Virginia has a crew of about 133 and the likely size of the SSN-AUKUS crew is being calculated as design work progresses.

The massive scale of the program and the nuclear element has understandably attracted strong attention, including criticism and questions about how skilled workforces will be found to build and crew the boats. Commentary has included suggestions that AUKUS is ‘dead in the water’.

Mead has no doubt that the project can be completed as planned. ‘Every day we ask ourselves the same question: ”Are we on track?” The answer is “yes.”’

For the program to succeed, it must be a national endeavour involving the Commonwealth, states and territories, industry, academia and the Australian people, Mead says. ‘To develop that social licence, we must provide confidence that we are going to deliver this capability safely and securely and not harm the environment.’

To build a nuclear mindset there must be an unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of safety, security, stewardship and safeguards, with all decisions underpinned by strong technical evidence. ‘It’s essential that everything we do is underpinned by strong technical and engineering evidence,’ he says. The reactor will be delivered as a sealed and welded unit that won’t be opened for the life of the submarine.

Mead acknowledges that recruiting is the big challenge.

He says comprehensive training of crews has begun, with Australian officers and enlisted sailors already passing nuclear training courses. ‘Australian officers have also topped courses in both the US and UK, showing that our people are up for the task that lies ahead.’

It’s intended that about 100 Australian officers and sailors will be in US training programs this year and they’ll go on to serve on US submarines as part of their crews. Other Australians will train in Britain and serve in Royal Navy boats.

Mead’s agency now has 597 staff, including engineers, project managers, lawyers, international relations specialists and policy makers. That is likely to rise to about 1000.

Given that Australia is the first non-nuclear nation acquiring nuclear-powered warships, the agency is working flat out to ensure rigorous regulations and safeguards are in place, along with the international agreements to back them.

Mead says Australia’s Optimal Pathway for acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) was designed to ensure that Australia would meet the exhaustive requirements to own and operate such vessels as soon as possible.

According to the Optimal Pathway, the first stage will see the first of several US and British submarines operating from the base HMAS Stirling in Western Australia as Submarine Rotational Force–West (SRF-West) from 2027.

In 2032, Australia will receive the first of three Virginia-class submarines from the US. One of the Australian officers now in US submarines is likely to be its commanding officer after extensive service on a US boat. The first two of those boats will be Block 4 Virginias, each with about 10 years’ US service, and they’ll be delivered after two years of deep maintenance and with 23 years of operational life left in them, Mead says, adding that the third US boat will be a brand new Block 6 Virginia. The US Navy has not yet put the Block 6 design into production.

The plan is to have the first SSN-AUKUS completed in Australia by early 2040s. Australia has an option to ask for two more Virginias if the SSN-AUKUS effort is delayed.

Mead says that how long the Collins are kept operational will be a decision for the government of the day as the SSNs arrive. The current plan is to begin big overhauls, called life-of-type extensions, for the Collins class in 2026.

He acknowledges that having the Virginias, SSN-AUKUS and Collin classes all operational could bring supply chain and training issues, but he believes those challenges can be handled. Having combat systems and torpedoes that are common to all these submarines will help.

Australians are on the design and design review teams for SSN-AUKUS. ‘We are embedding more technical and engineering people into the British program.’

Large numbers of Australian workers will soon be embedded in the British submarine construction site run by BAE Systems at Barrow, UK. ‘Many will come from the Australian Submarine Corporation, where they’ve been working on Collins. They’ll deepen their expertise, very specifically on how to build a nuclear-powered submarine,’ Mead says.

BAE will bring the intellectual property to the partnership with ASC to develop Osborne into a shipyard for nuclear-powered submarines.

It’s often suggested in Australia that, because the US has fewer submarines than it believes it needs, it will refuse to hand any over to Australia if its own situation worsens.

Senior American officials have expressed strong alternative views on why the project’s success is very important to the US and why it is in their own interests to make it work.

The US publication Defense News quoted the commander of US submarine forces, Vice-Admiral Rob Gaucher, telling a conference in April that co-operation with Australia would help the US submarine fleet in important ways. These included increasing the number of allied boats working together on operations. Having Australian personnel gaining experience on US boats would help ease a recruiting shortfall in the US Navy that flowed from the Covid-19 epidemic, and having access to the Australian base at HMAS Stirling in WA would extend the US Navy’s reach and maintenance options.

Gaucher said that, because the Australian SSNs would operate in co-ordination with American boats, ‘we get more submarines far forward. We get a port that gives us access’ to the Indo-Pacific region.

He said that by the end of this year the US Navy would graduate about 50 Australians as nuclear-trained operators and another 50 submarine combat operators. They would train on US submarines for the rest of this decade, increasing the number of people qualified to stand watch on American boats.

‘We get the opportunity to leverage an ally who can help us with manning and operating. We get surge capacity because now I have another area [where] I can do maintenance,’ Gaucher said.

Dan Packer, a former navy captain who is now the US director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS, told Defense News that Australia had eight officers in the inaugural training cohort that began in 2023. Three of those eight will be moved into an accelerated training pipeline, and one will eventually be the first Australian Virginia-class commanding officer.

Packer said the US was helping Australia build its submarine force from about 800 personnel to 3000. This year the US would bring 17 Australian officers, 37 nuclear enlisted and 50 non-nuclear enlisted into its training program. ‘And we’re going to up that number every year.’

These personnel would be fully integrated into US attack submarine crews until Australia could stand up its own training pipeline.

At some point, he said, the US Navy would have 440 Australians on 25 attack submarines, with each fully integrated crew including two or three Australian officers, seven nuclear enlisted and nine non-nuclear enlisted sailors. ‘They will do everything that we do’.

Mead says Australian navy personnel have been aboard the US submarine tender USS Emory S. Land for several months learning to maintain and sustain nuclear-powered submarines, and a US Virginia-class boat will visit HMAS Stirling for maintenance this year. Parts will come from an evolving Australian supply chain.

That visit will not include reactor work, ‘but ultimately, we will undertake work on systems that support the sealed power unit, within the compartment that houses it on the submarine,’ Mead says.

He says providing the industrial base to build and sustain the submarines, and crewing them, will involve about 20,000 jobs. A lot of work is being done with universities, technical schools and industry to prepare this formidable workforce.

Mead has long been a student of international relations and says the decision to equip Australia with SSNs was based on recognition that the Indo-Pacific is becoming a more dangerous place and ‘nuclear submarines provide a very effective deterrent’.

He rejects the argument that technology will soon make the oceans too transparent for crewed submarines to operate safely. ‘Our allies and partners and other countries in the region do not see it that way, and neither do we. We’ve done our analysis, and we see that crewed, nuclear-powered submarines will be the leading war-fighting capability for the next 50 to 100 years.’

He’s at pains to stress that the submarines will always be under full Australian sovereign control.

‘They will always be under the Australian government’s direction, operated by the RAN, and under the command of an Australian naval officer.’

As the world transitions to clean energy technology, managing the hazardous waste that it produces becomes an urgent issue. Australia is well positioned to take the lead in this field and create a vertically integrated supply chain for critical-minerals and hazardous-waste management. It can do so by building on its excellent import-export infrastructure and expertise in natural resource extraction and handling.

Ensuring the safe disposal of hazardous waste is essential in a resilient and reliable green industry. The value chains for every currently viable green technology produce materials that are hazardous to the natural environment, and recycling cannot eliminate them entirely.

Thanks to a dry climate, low seismic activity, and sparsely populated areas, Australia is well positioned to build an industrial capacity in clean energy waste management and manage waste produced domestically as well as that of strategic partners. For example, Tellus’s operational Sandy Ridge repository in Western Australia handles, and their future Chandler repository in Northern Territory will handle, waste produced around the country and can even take certain waste from nuclear submarine operations. By working with the traditional owners of the land, such facilities can also give an economic boost to the area, thereby building the community support needed to continue developing domestic green industries.

The investments required to facilitate a clean energy industry have already been made. The Australian government committed $840 million to the Arafura Resources project, which will create the nation’s first combined mine and refinery for minerals. At the sub-national level, the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct in the Northern Territory added depth to the industrial base and infrastructure. The combination of such efforts has created an ecosystem for not only exporting clean materials but operating a world-leading hazardous waste management industry.

It is imperative that consumers understand that the premium paid on green minerals ensures that the industry is sustainable. The safeguards not only include labour standards but prevent disastrous ecological damage during production associated with the cheaper products.

Australian critical- minerals producers already face difficulty in competing on price. Through vertical control of supply chains, Chinese firms can manipulate the price of lithium and other critical minerals, grossly distorting market forces and undermining the viability of non-Chinese firms. While there was a market correction in the price of nickel in 2022, the development of the Indonesian nickel mining and processing industry, supported by Chinese investment, has led to ever increasing product surpluses. This prompted Australian private nickel producer Wyloo Metals to announce a temporary shutdown of its mines, while mining company BHP’s Nickel West operations at Kambalda are under review.

Legislation such as the US Inflation Reduction Act may provide some relief. The law includes guardrails that favour US strategic partners in development of critical minerals supply chains. Financial incentives and mandates to use clean materials support allied manufacturers and prevent China from dominating industries that are vital to US national security. As a strategic partner, Australia is well positioned to capitalise on this.

In an attempt to improve transparency about the true costs of critical mineral production, Australia and the United States called on the London Metals Exchange to differentiate between ‘clean’ nickel produced by countries with high environmental, social and governance standards and ‘dirty’ nickel produced at high cost to the environment. The exchange rejected the proposal, however, citing challenges in liquidity of trading.

An alternative way to increase consumer awareness would be to introduce ethical production labels similar to battery passports and build up support through such initiatives as Buy Australian. Coordination among strategic partners is essential to sending strong demand signals and promoting price stability during market distortions. Without this, the risk of closing more mines and processing plants will only increase.

Australia can and should play a leadership role in clean energy waste management and in lifting environmental standards throughout the Indo-Pacific. As the global race for critical minerals intensifies, it’s easy to overlook environmental costs when supply chains don’t have real solutions to the problem of toxic or radioactive waste. But in the long term, such projects will lose public support and jeopardise an industry that is vital to the green transition and national security. Australia must prioritise holistic approaches to green technology or risk ceding its position as a global leader in the mining industry and becoming entirely reliant on China for materials.