Resourcing Australia's Prosperity About the initiative
What is Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity and what will it achieve?
The 35-year Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative will establish a platform for delivering a strong and resilient resources sector that will benefit all Australians, now and into the future.
Led by Geoscience Australia, in partnership with state and territory governments, Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity will:
- Assess national resource potential, comprehensively mapping onshore resource potential for all of Australia’s 36 critical minerals and strategic materials, as well as storage opportunities for hydrogen and carbon, to underpin Australia’s resources future and support effective decision-making.
- Map all of Australia’s groundwater systems, supporting our climate resilience, our agricultural output and water security for communities, industries and the environment.
- Undertake 12 deep dive multicommodity assessments in selected onshore regions with unrealised potential for the resources needed to support Australia’s transition to net zero.
- Complete Australia-wide geoscience datasets, the building blocks to better understand what lies on and beneath the land surface and seabed.
Four core components of the Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative
Securing Australia’s future through precompetitive geoscience
Precompetitive geoscience supports resource development and comes before private sector exploration and investment.
Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity will accelerate the discovery and responsible development of Australia’s mineral, energy and groundwater resources, transforming Australia by:
Supporting the transition to net zero
- Growing a prospectus of investment opportunities to secure the resources needed for clean energy technologies.
- Locating viable sites for carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage underground for offshore renewable energy production.
- Assessing opportunities for resource development and decarbonisation of the resources industry.
Enabling a strong minerals and energy sector
- Identifying resource development opportunities and attracting investment in the short and medium term.
- Reducing exploration risk and accelerating new discoveries to secure a pipeline of resource projects for the long term.
- Enhancing responsible management of natural resources.
- Supporting project approval processes by unlocking environmental and geological information that supports planning and regulation.
Empowering First Nations peoples and local communities
- Advancing co-designed tools, partnerships and work programs alongside First Nations peoples to support responsible management of land and Sea Country.
- Informing opportunities for communities and First Nations economic self-determination and decisions affecting them.
- Building First Nations expertise in data collection and geoscience to support decisions about land and water resources.
Supporting continued innovation
- Revealing potential new sources of commodities used in high tech and strategic technologies.
- Facilitating the adoption of new and innovative technologies through public geoscience.
- Promoting growth in emerging technologies used in mining, natural resources management and related applications.
Benefits of government precompetitive geoscience
Precompetitive geoscience data, analysis and decision support tools inform decision-making by government, industry and communities.
- For explorers and resource developers, it will narrow the search area and lower the technical risks of resource exploration, particularly in unexplored and underexplored regions.
- For investors, it will provide information on resource opportunities, increasing Australia’s attractiveness as an investment destination.
- For governments, including environmental regulators and local decision-makers, it will inform resource and land management decisions.
- For First Nations peoples and regional Australians, it will provide information and certainty about their lands, enabling sustainable and responsible resource exploration and development that creates jobs and supports local economic growth.
An improved knowledge of Australia’s resource potential will provide a pipeline of new discoveries and sustainable development, generating new jobs and investment opportunities under the Australian Government’s Future Made in Australia policy.