Owww!!!!
"While the agency can be justifiably prod of that asset"
Prod?
That typo hurt!
Last year, the world noticed with more than a little trepidation that China was hoarding rare earths. The Middle Kingdom owns an awful lot of the world's known retrievable deposits of Scandium, Yttrium, Europium and Erbium that are often used in minute-but-critical quantities inside all manner of gadgets, and had made it …
True, but the Australian government has less control over the operation of the economy and so is less able to, for example, block or reduce sales of rare earths by fiat. As the introduction of the mining tax amply demonstrated, in these shores what the mining industry wants the mining industry pretty much gets.
There's political stability, and there's stability of operating environment, and one does not necessarily guarantee the other.
Those clever Chinese, concerned about projected long term shortages and high prices of rare earths; decided on a cunning plan to mainipulate the rest of the world into improving the supply of rare earths. The Chinese were willing to suffer short term pain in exchange for the long term gain of everyone. Altruism at its finest.