Dale Last, Minister for Regional and Rural Development – Upcoming projects (28 April)

0:00Rural Queensland, today on the Resonate Broadcast Network, as I said at the top of the show, we'll start with Dale last, the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines and the Minister for Manufacturing and the Minister for Regional and Rural Development. That's where we need to be looking at. There is a lot going on, whether or not it's the long-term future for those coal mines that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Dale joins us this morning and Plenty going on. Good morning, mate. Thanks so much for being with us. Good morning, Dobbo, and very good morning to all the listeners. Firstly, for Townsville and that facility, if you build it in the cities and they will come from the regions, the Chris Fully Government, this is up the back of yourself and David Christopher Wolley, the headline-read well, planning for the future, helping power the future with Australia's first facility in Townsville. It's a facility to turn raw graphite into battery ready material is now operation in Townsville. It had a lot of time where there was a lot of

1:01need for approval. You guys ticked all the boxes, got it underway, and now it's going to help the Northwest Province, which is huge. Oh, look, it's such a good news story, graphite, the graphite story. And this had its seeds, acula in that U.S. trade mission that I went on fast, February. And while I was over there, they said to me, you know, is there a company that we should be looking at and getting behind? And I said, well, what's the matter of fact? I do have a company, and that's doing some great work. And we mentioned Graphenex, of course, they then sign that historic deal with U.S. X and Bank. And that's allowed them to bring forward their project by three years and we've fast tracked the approvals as well. And here that now they're up and running, they're producing the world's best battery endote. And it is a really good news story. 200 more regional jobs in Queensland. It's the second largest deposit of natural graphite is located near Croydon. So the process is very, very good now. And the supply chain will help.

2:05And when you talk about what it will do, it delivers, you know, you know, the components for lithium batteries, it helps like obviously drones, robotics, electric vehicles. But this is all coming from Queensland. And we can't talk enough about how you build some of this. I mean, that's the big things. Like they're the big things that we want. And it is just so critical that we have these kind of businesses that are able to provide these kind of jobs. 200 more jobs in towns will be massive. Oh, absolutely. And talk about being well received up there. It's, as you said, it's job, jobs, jobs. But we've got our common user facility up there about to open in the middle of the year as well. So there's more jobs attached to that. And a couple of big announcements coming up with some more minds in Queensland as well. So there's a lot going on at the moment. And it's an exciting time for the resource sector. Can I ask you this? In that same press release that

3:09happened last week, the crisply government and rightly so is calling on federal government to support the proposal to jointly fund some investments. And when we talk about that, we talk, you know, and we talk the Queensland resources common user facility in towns. Well, that's 37 million. We talk about the upgrade of the Mount Iser rail line, 227 million. The tungsten capacity uplift from investing operations at Mount Carbine, you know, pilots were screening and processing critical minerals, you know, at resource centers, you know, that's 10 in Makai. Like all this stuff, you guys are wanting to happen in the regions. And you'll remit whether or not it's to Womba, whether or not it's Makai, whether or not it's Mount Iser, where you want to grow these things. But you guys just can't do it alone. You've had a hell of a mess. You've had to try and steer a ship around. And the federal government at the moment has to come in and joint venture it. Are we getting closer to them understanding the the enormity of this and wanting to support it? Well, I think we are. And this is off the back of that US Australia critical minerals alliance.

4:12It's a huge sum of money involved that we're talking about here. Queensland's a resource state along with Western Australia. And we've certainly put our hand up and sent that message back to camera that, you know, we expect that we're going to get a fair chunk of that pie because we are a resource state. We've got these projects in the wings. We're ready to go. We're being proactive. We're opening up these areas or exploration and drilling. And we're seeing the results of that. And we think we've got a very, very strong case to argue in this in this instance for some of that funding. Okay. So that's one project ticked. And when you've got, you know, Minister of the natural resources of mine, you've got a lot of people coming from everywhere. Whether or not the gas industry and the Taroum trough and Jared Blay saying, right, we're rolling for business there. Were you happy with that decision and you want that to go ahead? Oh, look absolutely. That's up there. I opened up that area in my last year and we're ahead of the game. And, you know, they've found the oil, the oils there. They're now proving up that reserve.

5:16And we're going full steam ahead with the development of the trough and the forcing conjunction with that. We're now in discussions with a couple of proponents to actually build another refinery in Queensland. We need to take back some of that sovereign capability and control our own destiny when it comes to fuel supplies. We can't keep going back to this sort of a situation when we're in at the moment. And so we're certainly making big moves in that space. Can we steer that ship away from the angst that there is there at the moment? Because that's my biggest concern. We know full well that we've been thrown into the curve by the federal government around this fuel issue. Now, if we can steer the ship and we know what's on it, they're a mango and we can understand that and look, that can grow. But can we honestly be self-sufficient? I mean, we're so mineral rich here, Dale, in this state. And it seems like for so long, different governments before you guys got in, we're so quick to give it away.

6:16Can we just keep a little bit of it ourselves and make it profitable? So we can actually, not be, we're never going to be self-sufficient, but we're not growing our food. We've got enough mineral and resource. Surely, with industry and in your remit, we can absolutely steer the ship back in the right direction. Oh, look, I think we can. It just needs a vision and a determination to make it happen. And that's certainly the philosophy that I'll come into this role with. And you think about Queensland as 51 of the world's critical minerals right here in this state. So we're ideally positioned to capitalise that now. We've found oil. So that's the next frontier for us in terms of reducing our own fuel. We've got a small refinery here in Mangal, we've got another one at Litton. We're short, you know, probably around 100,000 barrels a day. So that's what we're working on at the moment. But there wouldn't be nice if we were producing all the fuel that Queensland needs right here in this state. You did right. Now, mate, I should have

7:17talked to you this about this last month. But the, and I've got to congratulate you. And I mean, this genuinely, there was a petition by Michael Offerdale around the land transfer at Tobia. You answered that petition in Parliament in March. And there's going to be obviously an independent review of it now to see whether or not it was the right way. And look, it might be right. It might be right. But you actually stood up. And on behalf of the petition of residents, and drew attention to it and asked the Premier whether or not to suspend the transport and restore fair and local transparent land governance in Queensland. Now, this is a bigger issue than Tobia, right? Because what happened under under a different land use agreement with a different government? Things went south everywhere. And now we know that there has been some mistruse done by different people. And rightly so, people get frustrated. They get upset. And they say, they probably don't

8:20remember. But you've actually got to the point of this. And you need to be congratulated because you actually went and made that commitment and said, listen, we absolutely need to look at this. Yeah, look, I'm the state native title minister. As I've said, you know, I will assess every single native title claim application on its merits. It is federal legislation that we duty-bound to comply with. But, you know, we're operating under a very open and transparent process here. And the law is the law. And commonwealth law, Trump state law, as we all know, but that's by the same token. It's about making sure that each one of these cases is examined in a very open and transparent way. Yeah, I do want to congratulate you. Just before I get you, and I know you're busy. You've got a breakfast to go to. Can I ask you this? More minds wanting to come in. I mean, a lot of people say, oh, we're shutting down because of the royalties. That's garbage.

9:21And we understand that it's tight. But there's a lot of outside factors like world prices, fuel prices. But there are companies wanting to open new minds. The process of trying to be able to get that down. Is there a way we can streamline it and make it easier? Oh, we're doing it. As we speak, Dobbo, we're fast tracking those approvals and putting in place processes constantly to make that an easier, more streamlined process for all these mining companies. I've got a couple of coal mine applications and books at the moment that we're working through. So it's stay posted for that use in the coming months. Yeah, I think that's great news. Dale, appreciate your time this morning doing a phenomenal job. Did like it, mate, when you go mainstream, high stakes in the career, mate, you're battle from the verdict and just doing well. You know, like, I really appreciate your time this morning, mate. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks, Tom. I just go to show you what you can achieve if you have a go. Certainly does. It certainly does. It was very good. I enjoyed reading it on Sunday in the career

10:25month. This is rural Queensland today. That was dire last. The Queensland Minister for Natural Resources of mine, Minister for Manufacturing and Minister for Regional Rural Development doing a phenomenal job. This is rural Queensland today.