The government is providing $566.1 million over 10 years from 2024-25 for the new Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative. This will enable Geoscience Australia to comprehensively map Australia’s natural resources.
This measure will provide publicly available data and information free of charge, helping to identify highly prospective areas for resource exploration and potential new discoveries. This will generate new jobs and economic development under a Future Made in Australia, ensuring our resources sector continues to underpin our economy.
Together with a range of critical minerals measures, this investment will also consolidate Australia’s position as a global leader and supplier of critical minerals, strategic materials and other resources. These are key to building renewable technologies like solar panels and batteries, as well as medical and defence technologies.
Investment package
Through the initiative, Geoscience Australia will:
- deliver national mapping of resource potential for critical minerals, strategic materials, hydrogen and other resources to support net zero transition
- map all of Australia’s groundwater systems, helping support climate resilience, agriculture and water security
- conduct in-depth regional studies of onshore areas considered highly prospective, yet unexplored
- revisit and modernise existing offshore data to assess carbon capture and storage potential and identify sites suitable for offshore wind infrastructure
- deepen its engagement with First Nations peoples.
An improved knowledge of Australia’s resource potential will increase Australia’s investment attractiveness across the global resource exploration sector. It will also lead to an accelerated pipeline of discoveries and developments far into the future.
Deloitte Access Economics found that Commonwealth, state and territory government precompetitive geoscience supported $76 billion in value added to the Australian economy. It supported 80,000 full-time equivalent jobs in 2021-22 alone. This will place us in a strong position to maintain our competitive investment edge and share of the international resources market.
Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity will provide this essential geoscience information to a wide audience:
- Explorers and resource developers will better understand prospective areas, narrowing the search space and lowering technical risks of resource exploration.
- Investors will have more information on resource opportunities, increasing Australia’s attractiveness as an investment destination.
- Regional communities and farmers will gain essential information to support land and water management.
- Local governments and regulators will have information to inform resource and land management decisions.
- First Nations peoples will have more information about their lands through partnerships and co-design of regional projects to understand resource potential. This will help with sustainable management of groundwater and build First Nations peoples’ expertise in applying geoscience to care for Country.
The initiative builds on Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program (run over 8 years from 2016-24 at a total cost of $225 million).