CANBERRA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has detailed a plan to establish a strategic reserve of critical minerals if his governing Labor Party wins a second term in power at the general election on May 3.
Albanese on Thursday said that a re-elected Labor government would spend an initial 1.2 billion Australian dollars (765 million U.S. dollars) to establish the reserve by buying agreed volumes of critical minerals from Australian miners through voluntary offtake deals and obtaining options to purchase them at a certain price.
He said in a statement that "increasingly uncertain times" require a new approach for Australia to "maximize the strategic value of critical minerals."
Albanese announced plans for the strategic reserve earlier in April in response to sweeping U.S. tariffs on imports, but had not detailed the policy proposal until Thursday.
"It will mean we can deal with trade and market disruptions from a position of strength, because Australia will be able to call on an internationally significant quantity of resources in global demand," he told reporters on the election campaign trail in Western Australia.
Critical minerals refer to a group of elements -- such as lithium, rare earths and cobalt -- that are essential for modern technologies, including renewable energy infrastructure and modern computing.
Australia is the world's largest producer of lithium, with most coming from mines in Western Australia.
Albanese's government in 2023 launched a seven-year national strategy to grow the country's critical minerals sector and, in May 2024, committed 566 million Australian dollars (360.8 million U.S. dollars) in funding over 10 years to map Australia's critical minerals deposits.
Thursday marked nine days until Australia's election day, with major opinion polls unanimously projecting that Labor is on track for a victory that would make Albanese the first leader of either major party -- Labor or the Coalition -- to win consecutive elections since 2004.
Coalition leader Peter Dutton said on Thursday that the conservative party does not support Labor's strategic reserve plan and would work on its own policy if it forms government.
According to data from the Australian Electoral Commission, 1.13 million of Australia's 18 million registered voters cast their mandatory ballots in the first two days of early voting, which opened across the country on Tuesday morning.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that it marks an increase of 17 percent from the number of ballots cast in the first three days of early voting in 2022. ■