Toward Decline
Australia’s critical-minerals strategy has a Brazil-sized gap
Lowy Institute Institutional·2026-08-20australia_economicP1: Resource SovereigntyP3: Industrial BaseP5: Strategic Decoupling
Why it matters
Australia's failure to develop downstream critical-minerals processing capacity leaves it dependent on external processors (often China-aligned) despite possessing raw-material sovereignty. This gap directly undermines Pillar 1 (Resource Sovereignty) and Pillar 3 (Industrial Base), reducing Australia's ability to convert mineral wealth into strategic leverage or domestic defence-industrial resilience during supply-chain disruption or geopolitical competition.
Pillar tags and the significance note are AI-classified (Claude) and human-curated. The platform's own preparedness scores never move on a single story without a separate human approval.