29 October 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

ALBANESE’S much-touted plan for his audience with the Mad King was to offer our ‘critical rare earth minerals’ for a reduction of the 100 per cent tariff on imports of branded or patented pharmaceutical products from October 1, unless a pharmaceutical company was building a manufacturing plant in the US.

 

Pharmaceutical products are one of the top export markets for Australia to the US, worth around $1.6 billion in 2023-24.

 

But despite all the hype about the critical mineral deal, said to be worth A$13 billion in new investment, it should be looked at with a great deal of scepticism. While Australian producers may be rubbing their hands at the prospect of government largesse, Australian taxpayers should be wary of any deal with Trump.

 

Much like the fictional unobtanium in Avatar, critical minerals, as the name suggests, are of huge economic and strategic importance and Trump was determined to get his greedy hands on them without conceding any concessions. It was no surprise then that Trump refused to move on the pharmaceutical tariffs, yet Albanese still gifted him the farm, offering him reduced environmental protections for critical minerals extraction and a potential U.S. veto on who Australia sells to, and invests with, in this essential industry.

 

So, how good is the critical minerals deal for Australia? Trump's motivation to get the deal done was obvious – circumventing China’s stranglehold on the industry. But regardless of the fact that we are good at digging stuff up, it's just too expensive to process and we don't have the steady stream of skilled workers that are needed.

 

And that's all before we even get to the environmental impact. The radioactive waste produced in separating rare earths is a major problem.

 

China dominates the sector of processing rare earth elements, because it doesn't care that it is so environmentally damaging. They have actually acknowledged that it has helped contribute to what they call cancer villages, with people getting cancer from radiation from the mining of rare earth elements.

 

Financially, it's also been extremely costly for China - spending 14 times the amount that they were getting for rare earth elements on the international market for clean-up. That is why  Australia has never previously properly developed a critical minerals industry.

 

While Environment Minister Murray Watt has already signalled that long-awaited environmental law reforms would focus on "streamlining" assessment processes for major projects, such as critical minerals, and devolving approval to states and territories, how do we deal with health and environmental risks.

 

Critical minerals deposits are scattered throughout the country, more often on or near farmland and regional communities, and objections to proposed mines from affected residents are already growing loud. But if past performance is any indication, community concerns will fall on deaf government ears, as mining companies continue to get their own way.

 

The 'horrendous' gamble of fast-tracking the Trump-Albanese critical minerals deal not only poses a risk to the environment, but also to the nation’s food chain. There are concerns by farmers that the dust from mining the minerals could contaminate crops — mainly wheat, barley, canola and lentils.

 

The question that hasn't been answered, of course, which our government should have clarified long before trying to deal with a lunatic, who changes his mind on a whim, does Albanese actually understand the impact on agricultural land that mining critical mineral will have, and the additional risks from increased activity, such as fires or road accidents, the risk from toxic mineral dust, as well as the disruption from additional traffic or 24/7 lights and noise in otherwise peaceful areas.

 

So, do we value more the minerals that sit beneath the soil, or the people that live and farm and operate within their community above the soil?

 

And what did the Reserve Bank of Australia have to say about the farm being sold to the U.S.? It is not expecting another epic mining boom from Australia’s production of critical minerals, such as rare earths, lithium and copper, which may only partially offset the decline in fossil fuels during the energy transition.

 

"The outlook for critical minerals was extremely uncertain and would depend on the speed of the rollout of renewable energy, the take-up of electric vehicles and the competitiveness of domestic production", the RBA said in a research paper published on 23 October 2025.

 

Enter the phantom submarine deal

 

What the media have failed to reveal is that Albanese’s meeting with the Mad King masks the hard truth of Australia’s defence and trade surrender to Trump – he left his wallet, his keys and his bank details in the hands of an unstable madman. All in the delusional hope that one day, Australia’s Navy will receive the much coveted Virginia Class submarine – albeit secondhand submarines.

 

Trump’s ‘full steam ahead’ public endorsement of AUKUS was because he has Australian taxpayers building the U.S. an $8 billion nuclear submarine base at the Perth base in Western Australia, while still pumping billions more directly into the U.S. nuclear submarine industry. Yet, there is still no guarantee that we will ever receive those yearned for submarines.

 

While Trump talked up the US industrial capacity to build nuclear submarines for Australia under AUKUS, his rhetoric was in stark contrast to reality. Whatever Trump says, the U.S. is not producing any spare nuclear submarines for Australia and, as Trump clearly knows, AUKUS doesn’t even require them to deliver any.

 

At a time when Australia should be looking to the region to find ways to promote peace and independence, Albanese has aligned Australia closer and closer to the Mad King with all the instability and divisive hard right politics that he brings.

 

Trump’s statement that there were plenty of submarines, was what Albanese wanted to hear. But like a lot of what Trump says, it has no connection to reality.

 

Despite Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of the submarine pact, many questions remain unanswered on AUKUS. Questions and uncertainties that our Prime Minister doesn’t want to hear nor entertain as yet. But the stark reality of the Mad King’s reign, and to change his mind on a whim, should be of great concern.

 

Albanese said about those uncertainties: “We're not pre-empting that,” he said of comments from a U.S. official that there had been some “ambiguity” in the existing AUKUS agreement.

 

“We don't make announcements about AUKUS and [its] structure at a press conference.”

 

The U.S. is barely building one Virginia Class nuclear submarine a year; they need to more than double that production rate to make AUKUS work. Whatever Trump may say, there remains no credible plan to do this. His promise that the submarines will be "moving very, very quickly" should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

No wonder Trump was smiling like a deranged Cheshire cat in the photoshoot with Albanese – a grin straight out of Alice in Wonderland –, he had yet again hoodwinked Australia.

 

Of course, it’s all upside for the Mad King! Why? Because he knows that, even after all the rhetoric and promises made to Albanese, AUKUS doesn’t require him to hand over a single submarine.

 

Keeping AUKUS on life support means the U.S. gets new and expanded US bases across Australia, billions of dollars for US industry and US weapons and control over Australia’s critical minerals.

 

Yet critical minerals are key to a green future, but Albanese has put Australia in lockstep with an administration that thinks climate change is a hoax. So, why does our government routinely engage in these rituals to appease Trump - praising him and showering him with gifts and anything else they think of? It does nothing more than bind us to an increasingly erratic U.S. administration.

 

While the AUKUS submarine deal sinks deeper into ocean, there is little doubt that Albanese’s meeting with Trump hasn't had the desired or positive outcome for Australia’s renewables transition – instead, it shackles it. The vassal state has signed up to fuel America’s military – one of the world’s largest polluters – for the sake of phantom submarines and a photo-op.

 

What Australia should be doing is to fuel global green technologies with strong environmental protections and community benefits, not more handouts to mining corporations and billionaire donors, whilst being locked to the U.S.’s climate-denialist agenda.

 

The fact remains, If our governments were serious about energy transition, there needs to be, without any wavering, strong ambition that ensures a just and fair transition for critical minerals that doesn’t come at a cost to our ecosystems, our communities, our health, our food production and First Nations heritage.

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