By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will seek progress on the AUKUS defence technology partnership and critical mineral supply chains during a visit to Washington next week, as Canberra tries to reduce its long-term trade exposure to China.
In comments to parliament before his Sunday departure, Albanese said the AUKUS partnership, to transfer U.S. and British nuclear submarine technology to Australia, was crucial to the future of the U.S. alliance.
He also flagged announcements on critical minerals, clean energy transformation, and an economic deal.
Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defence at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney, said greater collaboration between the U.S. and Australia in critical technologies was likely to be a focus in Washington, delivering swifter results than the ambitious plan to build nuclear-powered submarines in Australia by 2040.
The AUKUS pact faces hurdles in the U.S. Congress, and from U.S. export controls that could slow its implementation, much to the frustration of Australian officials.
The so-called AUKUS “pillar 2” commits to jointly developing quantum computing, undersea, hypersonic, AI and cyber technology.
Australia and the United States struck an agreement in May to align on clean energy and critical minerals, when Albanese and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Japan.
Biden had been forced to cancel at short notice a visit to Australia for a summit of the Quad – grouping the United States, Australia, Japan and India – because of an impasse in Washington over the U.S. debt ceiling.
COLLABORATION
Jeffrey Wilson, director of research and economics at the Australian Industry Group, said it was time for detailed plans on concrete industry collaboration, with rare earths a priority.
Australia has large deposits of rare earths, although most global supply is dominated by China, and investor risk has been a hurdle to developing a processing industry in Australia.
The U.S. auto and clean energy sector is one of the largest markets globally, and the U.S. Department of Defense is a major buyer of strategic minerals, said Wilson.
“With many critical minerals markets dominated by Chinese state-owned enterprises, the U.S. has declared an interest in ‘friendshoring’ its supply chains to allied partners like Australia,” he added.
In Albanese’s ninth meeting with Biden since becoming prime minister in 2022, he is also under pressure to raise the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. A group of Australian lawmakers pressed U.S. officials last month to drop efforts to extradite Assange, an Australian citizen, from Britain.
It is unclear whether Albanese will address U.S. Congress, amid an impasse over selecting a new Speaker.
Democratic Congressman Joe Courtney, co-chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus in Congress, said Albanese could address AUKUS-related concerns over how Australia protects sensitive technology.
“I think the (Australian) government has made some really impressive changes to reassure the State Department and Defense Department folks that Australia’s got a good system to make sure that it’s not going to end up in some company that is Chinese owned,” he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Gareth Jones)
