Peak groups applaud critical minerals announcement

There’s been a positive response to the Queensland Government’s critical minerals package announced at the World Mining Congress in Brisbane today. The Association of Mining Exploration Companies (AMEC) has done an ‘Oh, what a feeling’ jump with the announcement of the plan to fast-track development. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk singled out AMEC as influencing the direction of the policy in a speech officially opening the World Mining Congress in Brisbane. Related: Premier unveils $245m critical minerals push The government had listened to industry, chief executive officer Warren Pearce said. AMEC chief executive officer Warren Pearce. “It's incredibly impressive to see government really understand what industry needs to both explore, make discoveries and then build projects, but also to build the market behind in terms of downstream processing, batch manufacture and an implementation back into the grid. “The critical mineral strategy today has got a comprehensive plan and each part of that plan, the nine action points, they've actually got funding commitments behind it. “We know the plan's good, but the plan without funding behind it really doesn't mean very much." Part of the plan to eliminate tenement costs is worth $55million over five years. It was a big incentive, Mr Pearce said. “We'll make Queensland the lowest cost jurisdiction in Australia to explore. That's going to be very attractive to bring more explorers to Queensland look for critical minerals," he said. “But also we asked for them to actually put in place some kind of mechanism to support you when you go to government through the regulatory process and the announcement of the critical minerals office, that's going to make it easier for industry, make a complex system simple. It'll hopefully speed up the approval process." Newly formed peak industry group the Critical Minerals Association Australia said the plan was cutting edge in terms of the zones created for critical minerals projects. Critical Minerals Association Australia managing director Namali Mackay. The announcement focused on the creation of zones which would allow for environmental and other assessments to reduce the lead time to production. A vanadium zone was formed around Julia Creek and a cobalt zone around Mount Isa both of which have generic environmental values. The second pillar around the creation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) value with the development of industry was also well received, association managing director Namali Mackay said. It was a world first, Ms Mackay said. “Mainly because as far as we can tell, there's no other sort of structure that's created around just critical minerals that has focused on speeding up the processing of some of the project planning and getting the projects off the ground in quite the same way .... It generally falls into the wider mining space in other jurisdictions. So this is really something new. “What's good about this is that there's political will in lockstep with government, the officials and industry. So it's all sort of come together very well. And obviously there's quite a bit of political backing to make it happen fast and that's the main issues against time, you know, we've got a time issue.” Image at top of page: Core sample from the Lindfield vanadium deposit near Julia Creek - a vanadium zone would be set up around Julia Creek as part of the strategy announced today.

Peak groups applaud critical minerals announcement

Industry Queensland

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