Australia joins Ottawa’s G7 minerals alliance as Mark Carney urges middle powers to unite against supply chain shocks
In a display of growing strategic alignment between two “middle powers”, Australia and Canada on Thursday signed new agreements on critical minerals as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed the Australian Parliament.
Carney’s visit to Australia is part of a multi-leg Asia-Pacific tour that also includes Japan and India, underscoring Canada’s focus on Indo-Pacific partnerships at a time of heightened great power rivalry and supply chain fragmentation.
“In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice: compete for favour or combine for strength,” Carney told lawmakers, framing the new agreements as part of a broader push for coordinated action among advanced economies navigating geopolitical turbulence.
Introducing him in Parliament, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the address as a reflection of deepening bilateral ties.
“Australia and Canada are middle powers in a world that is changing. We cannot change it back, but we can back ourselves, back our citizens, and back each other,” Albanese said.
Australia joins Canada’s G7 critical minerals alliance
At a joint press conference, Albanese confirmed that Australia would join Canada’s G7 critical minerals production alliance — a Canada-led initiative aimed at diversifying and securing global production and supply of minerals essential for clean energy, semiconductors and defence systems.
“We have agreed to deepen our relationship across several areas, building on our joint declaration of intent on critical minerals that we signed last year,” Albanese said.
The alliance seeks to reduce reliance on concentrated supply chains, particularly those dominated by China, which controls a significant share of global processing capacity for several strategic minerals.
Together, Australia and Canada account for roughly one-third of global lithium and uranium production, and more than 40 per cent of global iron ore output — placing them in a pivotal position as Western nations attempt to reshape supply networks for electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure and military applications.
Canada’s Energy and Mining Minister Tim Hodgson told Reuters earlier this week that Ottawa favours a coordinated production alliance or “buyers’ club” approach to tackle supply concentration, rather than relying solely on mechanisms such as price floors.
Stockpiles, defence alignment
Australia has already committed A$1.2 billion ($850 million) to establish a national critical minerals stockpile, beginning with antimony, gallium and rare earths — materials crucial for advanced electronics and defence technologies.
Albanese said Australia’s stockpiling framework would now be more closely aligned with Canada’s defence stockpiling regime, suggesting greater interoperability in supply resilience planning between the two countries.
“There’s a lot Canada and Australia can do together on critical minerals as producer nations,” Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King told Reuters ahead of Carney’s visit.
Broader strategic cooperation
Beyond minerals, the two governments signalled plans to deepen cooperation in defence and maritime security, trade, and artificial intelligence — sectors increasingly viewed as critical to national competitiveness and security.
The agreements come as global markets remain unsettled by conflict in the Middle East and intensifying US-China strategic rivalry, both of which have amplified concerns over supply chain vulnerabilities in energy and advanced materials.
By stepping up collaboration, Canberra and Ottawa are positioning themselves not merely as resource suppliers, but as architects of a more coordinated, rules-based supply framework among like-minded economies.
For Carney, the parliamentary address — his first to Australia’s legislature — served both symbolic and strategic purposes: reinforcing Canada’s Indo-Pacific engagement while making the case that middle powers can wield greater influence collectively than alone.
As he told lawmakers, the choice facing such nations is stark — to seek favour among larger rivals, or to “combine for strength.”
With inputs from agencies.
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