PERTH (CU)_Last week, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced a historic security pact, to protect and defend their “shared interests in the Indo-Pacific”. The partnership, which was widely perceived as an effort to counter China, drew criticism from Beijing, with foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian describing the agreement as “extremely irresponsible”.
Although Canberra has hailed the agreement as a coordinated show of diplomatic strength, several industries across the Trans-Tasman nation, the mining sector in particular, have expressed their concerns that the move may worsen already strained ties with China, Australia’s biggest export customer.
“We are strengthening our ties with allied partners on defence and security, and that is good, but we are not making similar efforts on rebuilding the relationship with our major trading partner,” Warren Pearce, the chief executive of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), said. He noted that the major concern is a response from China, which may well be an economic or trade position.
“We have got to get more sophisticated in the way we deal with this issue and the way we navigate the issue between our largest trading partner and our largest strategic defence partner,” Pearce added.
The concerns of the mining sector are not without warrant, as the Communist Superpower has already blacklisted Australian coal, while Beijing has also indicated plans to break reliance on Australian iron by beefing up imports from Brazil.
Accordingly, Pearce called on the Federal government to extend an olive branch to Beijing by making it clear that investments to sectors which are not directly linked to defence is welcome.
“Where it goes into future markets or industries particularly like battery minerals, which are going into electric vehicles or battery storage industries, which is largely divorced from defence, we should be quite clear that we are willing and open to accepting that investment from the Chinese companies,” the AMEC CEO said. “We are very much closing the door to a lot of opportunities both for ourselves but also for China. We should not be too concerned about commercial investment coming from China, even if it is coming from state-owned entities, when it doesn’t have a security concern.”
