We have significant to copious deposits of lithium, found where we have thorium in a two for the price of one mining operations; additionally some deposits are accompanied by rare earth mineralization?

Naturally multinationals and the Chinese will be trying to get their hands on it and as par for the course, with the earnest cooperation our sell anything not nailed down governments, and then charged through the neck by patent imbeciles who waffle on about a natural cost; which if you look at it objectively has nothing to do with the actual net cost of recovering and refining a mineral?

But a lot to do with quite massive debt creation (tax avoidance) executive salaries and gifted shares; and shareholder expectations?

Whereas, if we the people mined this new gold, we could just charge ourselves for the real costs of, principly men and machines, two way transportation and the odd serviced labor camp!

All we need are pollies prepared to put the national interest ahead of self interest and the "party"!?

And just as foreign miners can and do source their mining expertise and development funds locally, or import it, so can we!

And all that takes is using the brains you were born with, always providing you can tolerate the burning smell emanating from previously unused cerebral circuits!
Given local lithium supply, it makes perfect sense to develop right hand drive electric vehicles right here, where we lead the world in molded carbon fibre production.

And given we can't interest(shoot themselves in their own economic feet) foreign competitors?

We should simply bite the politically unpalatable political bullet and just crack on creating an employee owned co-opp to build them here?

And given that is the lowest possible cost manufacturing model, compete with the biggest and top heavy manufacturers for a very useful niche market.

Thereby providing the very necessary scales of economy, do something we've never done here before, build quality vehicles here at lower comparable production costs than the Chinese!

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago!
Rhrosty.

Well argued, Rhosty - your reasoning is alarmingly sound, but I'd like a bit more information about where our lithium and thorium supplies are.
Perhaps electric vehicle manufacturing could be established adjacent. Also, battery power producers.
With our plentiful potential (no pun) natural energy sources, we could become a global energy supplier.

They are trialling a new chemical extraction process for the hardrock lithium ore at Greenbushes WA. That and the higher concentration may be more competitive with brine. If lithium gets too expensive perhaps compounds of another light metal like sodium may find favour.

I agree that electric vehicles will have to rule the roads when oil production declines substantially from the present level. That assumes a world recession doesn't make the cars unaffordable. I doubt that home batteries like the Powerwall will get the takeup some suggest. What would help is if the system pays for itself before the battery needs replacing, currently not the case for most people.

Mineral sands have long had thorium, thrown away with the other wasted minerals, like lithium, as the rutile was extracted. There are significant mineral sand deposits in northern Victoria and along a previous marine boundary, created as heavily mineralized sand deposits, when sea levels were higher and the ocean covered much more of continental Australia.

It is not too difficult to recover leached mineral from finely crushed rock, and then use an acid or base precipitation process to recover the the selectively processed mineral.

As Taswegian suggests, the W.A. prospects hold commercial promise always providing the don't treat any accompanying thorium as an undesirable waste product, and down to the government and preferred energy policy? And I seem to recall some commercially viable rare earth find here in Oz, that was also accompanied by lithium.

Read, Cheaper than coal, Thorium. Type that into your search engine, if you want some expert opinion?

Or try, Australian rare earth find.
Rhrosty.