Opinion Editorial: Leaders’ time to act. Robbie Katter MP, KAP Leader.

5 June 2025

Leaders lead, they don’t follow.

The arena is set. Australia and Queensland are at a watershed moment. Our leaders have a choice; take control of our destiny or choose to be passively led by international powers.

Much has been said and published about the impending fate of my home city, Mount Isa. Global commodity trader Glencore has announced the closure of the city’s copper mine and has not committed to continuing operations of the copper smelter, or Townsville’s refinery.

But my concern, along with more and more political observers and industry leaders, is for the future of our nation.

Today, we can manufacture steel, aluminium, zinc, lead, and copper right here in Australia - from Australian ore, using Australian energy, and with Australian workers.

Yes, it may not be the cheapest on the market, but it’s ours.

We are at grave risk of losing this capability, all in the name of blind neo-liberalism.

Our ability to make things here, from our resources, employing our people, and for our benefit is at risk from global powers. Shareholder beholden corporates like Glencore, and market distorting nation states like China are real and imminent risks.

In 1942, as Australia’s exposure to World War Two intensified, the Commonwealth and Queensland governments took urgent action to ensure Australia had copper for the war effort – they directed Mount Isa Mines to produce and smelt copper.

If the Mount Isa Copper smelter is allowed to close, Australia will lose its ability to produce copper – our abundant copper ore and concentrate will likely be smelted in China.

The numbers don’t lie. 85% of the copper China smelts comes from other countries. In 2023, China made 12 million tons of refined copper but mined just 1.7 million tons. That same year, China held 41 million tons of copper reserves, 4.1% of the world’s total1.

Despite the global price for smelting copper being at record low levels (around $21 per ton, when a ‘normal’ price is $80 per ton), China continues to build and commission more smelters.

It doesn’t take an economics or geo-political genius to see that the Western World is being played at our own game – as the price for smelting continues to crash, so too does the economic ‘viability’ of facilities such as Mount Isa’s Copper smelter. Beholden to shareholders, and not national interest, the likes of Glencore will close the smelter and seek a more affordable way to smelt copper (read, send it to China).

This scenario is fine, and indeed encouraged, if you are reading your economics textbook, but not if you have the lens of national capability.

Australia’s leaders – our Prime Minister and Premiers – must free themselves from the shackles of free-marketeer globalist bureaucrats and blind ideology and invest in Australia. Invest in Australia’s future.

Australians must regain control of our strategic manufacturing assets if we are to have any hope of protecting our sovereign interests, and of benefiting from the global critical and strategic minerals boom.

We don’t need total government ownership, but we need to be able to go to bed at night with the knowledge that our nation’s future is not at the behest of a boardroom in Switzerland or a foreign power – like it is today.

It is vital our leader lead and aren’t led.

The arena is set. Will our chosen fighters fight, or will they acquiesce?

Robbie Katter is the leader of the Katter’s Australian Party (KAP), and the Queensland State member for Traeger.

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