Mike's Minute: We need minerals and can't ignore it

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The most telling part of the release of the draft of our critical minerals list is that we have never as a country developed a comprehensive picture of our mineral needs and weaknesses.

The obvious question is: why not?

Part of a strong resilient economy is when you do things yourself. As a small country we can't do everything because we don’t have domestic heft. We don’t have a natural domestic market for a lot of large-scale operations.

So, in some cases where we do things at scale, we sell it offshore. We are quite good at some of it, and farming would be an example.

But it is why we don't make cars. When we did it didn’t work financially so we are better off bringing them in.

But one of the great economic quandaries we have is a thing called a current account deficit. This shows we buy more stuff from the world than we sell to it.

That's not good.

We could mine more than we do. The fact that there are 35 minerals on the list, and by the way, the list doesn’t include coal or gold, means we have a lot of minerals.

Are we taking full advantage? Obviously not.

Could we? Why not?

Because a lot of people get angsty about mining.

But as the miners will tell you, it's an increasingly sophisticated industry that cleans up after itself in a completely different way from the old days.

Here is the simple truth - the world needs minerals. We need minerals the same way we need power to turn the lights on and our current predicament around generation and supply is all the evidence you need to know we should be prioritising jobs and costs of living over the ideology of renewables and conservation land.

Those opposed are often opposed no matter what. They aren't for turning. They think a fern and snail beats a job and power and that’s just the way they are.

They are allowed to be obsessed, but they shouldn't dictate economic travel.

Minerals are an income stream, a job stream, and a sensible, viable answer to a lot of economic problems.

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