Australia Minerals National Mineral Exploration Strategy

Last updated: 11 December 2023

Australia Minerals is a collaboration of Australia's federal, state and Northern Territory government geoscience agencies working together to offer ground-breaking information, unrivalled expertise and a record of innovation that supports mineral explorers to realise investment opportunities. 
The 2017-2022 National Minerals Exploration Strategy outlines a number of actions to be delivered by the Geoscience Working Group (GWG) under four strategic initiatives:

  1. Encouraging investment
    • Pre-competitive science to support decision-making: Develop new programmes for surveying, sampling and compilation/synthesis of company geoscience, exploration and environmental data. In addition, pursue digital collaboration and create a new open-source digital undercover exploration support system to support decision-making by government, industry and research. 
    • Mineral Exploration Investment Attraction Plan: Refresh the current Plan to account for changes in marketing channels, to incorporate a "register of issues" to insure alignment of Australia Minerals' offerings and messaging and to transform the Plan into a live document to stay abreast of market, technological and political developments.
  2. Harnessing our capability
    • UNCOVER Initiative: UNCOVER is a collaborative mineral exploration and research effort between industry, academia, and government geoscience and survey agencies. Actions for the GWG include the alignment of pre-competitive science initiatives with the UNCOVER roadmap priorities and strengthening of strategic collaborations. 
  3. Protecting the environment
    • Ensure the compliance of all field activities with environmental legislation;
    • Ensure effective availability and delivery of data to environmental stakeholders;
    • Connect environmental data to GWG's geoscience information portal.
  4. Supporting our people and communities
    • Generate new maps and information concerning the primary prospectivity of Australia;
    • Measure Strategy impact in terms of job creation and value leverage;
    • Undertake public education efforts on the value of geoscience.

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