Engineers Against Poverty chair Richard Threlfall calls for the engineering, infrastructure and construction profession to lead on cutting whole‑life emissions and controlling capital cost overruns in major civils programmes. He argues that effective infrastructure governance must move beyond compliance to active stewardship of carbon, cost and social outcomes, with engineers shaping procurement models and performance metrics rather than leaving them to financiers and policymakers. For practitioners, this signals greater responsibility for transparent cost baselines, carbon accounting and value-for-money evidence on large public works.

A Productivity Commission proposal to replace company tax with a hybrid cash flow tax has drawn a lukewarm response from the Minerals Council of Australia and the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, which warn it could deter long-life, capital-intensive projects. Industry groups argue that immediate expensing of capital and tighter limits on interest deductibility may not suit multi-decade mines with heavy upfront spend on shafts, processing plants and rail links. They are calling for detailed modelling of impacts on marginal projects, junior explorers and existing royalty and PRRT settings before any shift proceeds.

More than 60% of global demand for critical minerals is now met via international trade, with the IEF warning that copper and nickel could face material shortfalls by the mid-2030s as total demand for copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earths climbs from 28 Mt in 2021 to nearly 41 Mt by 2040. EV copper use alone is forecast to jump from 200,000 t in 2020 to 3.4 Mt by 2035, while Indonesia supplies over half of nickel, the DRC about 70% of cobalt, and China over 90% of rare earth refining. More than 600 policies now target critical mineral supply chains, with the US, Canada and Australia incentivising exploration, refining and recycling, and Indonesia, Chile and Peru pushing in-country value addition and export controls.