Lithium Valley Main Report 2018
2.5 The fierce urgency of Now Countries around the world, international business and technological innovation are not waiting for WA to take advantage of the New Energy opportunity. Globally, there is intense competition to secure supply chains and dominate the New Energy metals markets. It is difficult to imagine WA capturing more of the benefits of this transformation if government, industry and the community do not collaborate as other countries are doing. Poor advice, the lack of or misguided planning over many years, an absence of a bipartisan vision or strategy now means a solution has to be fast tracked to improve the opportunity to capture these benefits. In the current environment is it questionable whether a traditional departmental planning process is suitable to the fast moving international business developments, competition from other countries or industry timelines. Does the government have sufficient and appropriate resources for this new and demanding role? Are the timings of a government planning process compatible with the speed of international developments in this industry? This is not about picking winners. It is about the government enabling or facilitating a suitable local business environment (Specialised Industrial Park – Kwinana) that attracts international companies with the critical intellectual property to do further secondary processing in WA. The private sector will do the majority of the planning and provide the financing. This government facilitation and enabling role must occur immediately as the sooner the government engages with industry the higher the likelihood international companies' investment decisions will include Kwinana in the international options available. The alternative is that WA misses the opportunity and unfortunately there are plenty of these examples in recent decades. The next section sets out the proposed recommendations to maximise the social, economic and environmental benefits for WA, Australia and trading partners.
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