By Alasdair Pal and Melanie Burton
SYDNEY, March 5 (Reuters) – Australia and Canada on Thursday signed a series of new agreements on critical minerals, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, which will involve Australia collaborating with the G7 critical minerals alliance.
Western nations have been attempting to diversify their supply chains away from China, which still controls the majority of production and processing of critical minerals, essential for semiconductors and defence applications.
“Earlier today, we signed a series of new agreements on critical minerals, including with respect to the G7 critical minerals alliance… the largest grouping of trusted democratic mineral reserves in the world,” Carney said in a speech to Australia’s parliament, on his final day of a three-day visit to the country. He did not provide further details.
The G7 alliance is a Canada-led initiative to diversify and secure global critical minerals production and supply.
Both major resources exporters, Canada and Australia together produce about a third of global lithium and uranium, as well as more than 40% of global iron ore.
Canada believes that the best way to address the issue of concentrated supply of critical minerals is through a production alliance or a buyers’ club rather than just a price floor, Energy and Mining Minister Tim Hodgson told Reuters on Tuesday.
Australia has already allocated A$1.2 billion ($850 million) to build a critical minerals stockpile, beginning with antimony and gallium.
“There’s a lot Canada and Australia can do together on critical minerals as producer nations,” Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King told Reuters ahead of Carney’s visit.
MIDDLE-POWER ALLIANCE
Carney is on a multi-leg trip across the Asia-Pacific region also taking in Japan and India, with his stop in Australia aimed at bolstering relations between the two so-called “middle powers”.
Introducing Carney, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his address to parliament – the first by a Canadian leader since 2007 – represented the closeness of the ties between the two nations.
“Australia and Canada are middle powers in a world that is changing. We cannot change it back, but we can back ourselves, back our citizens, and back each other,” Albanese said.
Carney has made the changing global environment a central theme of his visit, using a speech late on Wednesday to say the current conflict in the Middle East was a failure of the international order.
“In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice: compete for favour or combine for strength,” he told Australia’s parliament on Thursday.
As well as critical minerals, Australia and Canada are also expected to deepen cooperation in areas including defence and maritime security, trade and artificial intelligence, Carney’s office said ahead of the visit.
($1 = 1.4122 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney and Melanie Burton in Melbourne; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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