Australia has increasingly become close to the UAE with Emirates flying us to Dubai on our way to London, and Ehtiad does the same with us, but with them it drops us off in Abu Dhabi. And our fly-in/fly-out relationship, via some of the best airlines in the world, has recently become deeper with Qatar, which many of us fly with nowadays, rated the best in the world!

As oil runs out for some of these UAE members, and demand falls as the world becomes pro-planet and anti-climate change, the countries that make up the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, are looking to create new money-making vehicles to sustain their impressive economic growth stories.

This is not a cheap compliment as these countries have gone from being third world underperformers known for peal diving and fishing, until oil changed all of that in 1966, and the rest is history!

However, Dubai in particular, with its lower oil reserves has been a huge innovator, opting to be a big tourist mecca, big building builder and a big everything creator, and that’s where we come in, with the news that the UAE is set to be a big investor into Australia’s critical mineral resources industry.

The Critical Minerals List is made up of minerals:

• essential to modern technologies, economies or national security, specifically the priority technologies set out in the Critical Minerals Strategy
• for which Australia has geological potential for resources
• in demand from our strategic international partners
• that are vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

The new Strategic Materials List consists of 6 minerals:

• copper
• nickel
• aluminium
• phosphorous
• tin
• zinc.

And these are bound to play a big role in the world’s economic future and that’s why the UAE wants to play ball with us.

The UAE needs to diversify, and Australia has always grown off other countries’ people’s savings, and the UAE mob have plenty of petrodollars money to throw at us.

The AFR’s Andrew Tillett has reported what looks like a win-win deal for Australia and the UAE with the following news: “Australia will open the door to the United Arab Emirates’ $2.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund to invest in the burgeoning critical minerals industry after the Albanese government struck the first free-trade deal with a Middle Eastern country.

“Exporters are also in line for a boost of almost $700 million a year in new sales to the Gulf state, with tariffs to be eliminated on 99 per cent of Australian goods, including beef, sheep meat, seafood, metals and cold and flu medication.”

But not all important industry players are happy about this deal.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has “lashed the agreement, saying the UAE exposed workers to wage theft, extreme heat exposure and modern slavery, with migrant employees bonded to their employer and left those who quit their job vulnerable to punishment, detention or deportation.”

Trade Minister Don Farrell said Australian exports were expected to increase by $678 million a year off the back of the deal and given China’s slow recovery from the Covid-created economic slowdown, this looks like the trade deal we had to have.

The deal also shows that the government is into free trade deals and Senator Farrell is hoping that talks with the European Union could resume soon.

In a world that is embracing so much change, it’s not wise to be too picky about where your investment dollars come from, provided it’s not Russia and North Korea.

In reality most of our trading partners, like ourselves, have histories and even present regimes that we can’t be 100 percent proud of, and so it doesn’t make sense to be too discriminatory on whose money we accept to fund exports, businesses and jobs.

In the grand scale of things, this is Labor kicking a nice goal for the economy, exporters, other local businesses and even consumers, who will benefit from the free trade agreements that come with this deal.

This is a big win for Don Farrell and Labor, when they are in need of a big win or two!