The world now treats minerals and fuel as security. Australia mostly ships them raw and stores little at home. This opening essay of Under Our Feet puts the official numbers side by side and asks who decided, and who gained.
This is week one of a twelve-month investigation. I am putting official numbers side by side and asking who decided how Australia holds what sits under its ground, and who gained. No verdict yet. That is the series job.
Geoscience Australia's AIMR preliminary tables for 2025 put resource and energy exports at $392.2 billion, about 59 per cent of everything Australia sold abroad that year. The Department of Industry's Resources and Energy Quarterly for September 2026, released on 2 October, forecasts those earnings at $422 billion in 2026-27, up from $403 billion in 2025-26. Iron ore alone is forecast at $123 billion in 2025-26. LNG is $57 billion this year and $70 billion next, on Middle East prices. Critical minerals are about $17 billion rising to $26 billion, with lithium more than half.
Australia is first in the world for lithium resources (25 per cent) and first for production (38 per cent). It holds 48 per cent of the world's economic vanadium resources and produces none, and ranks fifth for graphite with the same zero output. Geoscience Australia, dated to December 2025.
In 2025, lithium ore and concentrates earned $4.704 billion. Refined lithium earned $303 million. Concentrate was 94 per cent of lithium export value (derived from the AIMR table). The rocks go. The refining mostly does not.
The Crown does collect. Western Australia's 2026-27 Budget Paper No. 3 estimates royalty income of $10.822 billion for 2025-26, of which iron ore is $8.819 billion. The Commonwealth Budget for 2026-27 estimates Petroleum Resource Rent Tax receipts at $1.4 billion for 2025-26. Against $57 billion of LNG export earnings, PRRT alone is about 2.5 per cent (derived). That is not the full tax take: projects also pay company tax and some royalties or excise. Company tax for the top miners is a later week.
The International Energy Agency asks net-importing members to hold 90 days of net oil imports. In July 2026 Australia held 50 days. Industry held all of it. Public stocks were zero. That is the lowest of the 28 net-importing IEA members. Japan held 178 days, 89 of them public. Korea held 214, with 110 public. A Parliamentary Library FlagPost from June 2026 notes Australia has not met the obligation since February 2012. Australia's share of the IEA's 11 March 2026 collective release was 4.8 million barrels from obligated industry stocks, because there was no public stock to release. Deeper fuel stockholding sits with the fuel essay due 28 October.
Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry holds 23.81 per cent of INPEX common shares plus a Class A golden share with veto rights over key corporate decisions. INPEX operates Ichthys LNG in Australia (company disclosure, 30 June 2026).
China treats minerals as a control list. MOFCOM and Customs put gallium and germanium under export licensing from 1 August 2023, then seven medium and heavy rare earths from 4 April 2025. A later October 2025 package was suspended until 10 November 2026. That clock is still running.
Norway is not like-for-like with Australia's PRRT. The Norwegian Ministry of Energy, citing Finance, expects net government petroleum cash flow of NOK 670.6 billion in 2026, including NOK 256.1 billion from the state's direct stakes in fields, and the state owns 67 per cent of Equinor. Australia's PRRT estimate is $1.4 billion against $57 billion of LNG exports. Different systems. Same question about what the public keeps.
The decisions run through both parties.
On 12 October 2006, Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter released a domestic gas reservation policy: set aside the equivalent of 15 per cent of gas from future offshore developments for domestic use. WA has reserved since then. The east coast has not. The Turnbull Government made the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism on 30 June 2017, a trigger that lets the Resources Minister restrict LNG exports if a domestic shortfall is likely. The Fuel Security Act 2021, under the Morrison Government and passed with Labor support, created the Fuel Security Services Payment and the Minimum Stockholding Obligation for the two remaining refineries at Geelong and Lytton.
On 20 June 2023, Resources Minister Madeleine King released the Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030. Export Finance Australia manages a $5 billion Critical Minerals Facility. Parliament passed Strategic Reserve powers in April 2026 for a $1.2 billion Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve led by the Resources Minister. No offtake appears on the DISR or EFA pages I am working from, so I do not claim one has closed. Iluka's half-year results to 30 June 2026 say the Eneabba rare earths refinery, backed by a large CMF loan, is on schedule for commissioning in 2027. Processing is announced. Much of it is not yet producing.
On 14 October 2026, King introduced the Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026 to the House. Status: before the Representatives. No east-coast reservation is in force today. Secondary reporting puts obligations from January 2028 if the bill passes; the Budget text earlier said 1 July 2027. I am not treating either start date as settled until the Explanatory Memorandum is read in full. The Coalition also pledged an east-coast reservation in its 2025 election costings. The habit of shipping first and holding later is bipartisan.
IEA non-compliance since February 2012 spans Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese. That is continuity, not a one-government story.
From the June quarter of 2021 to the June quarter of 2026, the Wage Price Index rose 18.1 per cent and the Consumer Price Index rose 24.1 per cent. Real wages on that measure fell 4.8 per cent. That is derived from ABS tables.
In the year to August 2026, electricity in the CPI rose 13.2 per cent, largely due to the ending of Commonwealth electricity rebates, the ABS says. That is not, on the ABS's own words, a wholesale price surge. The National Fuel Security Plan's fuel statistics, citing the ACCC for 7 October 2026, put the five-city average at $2.39 a litre for petrol and $2.81 for diesel: petrol up 68 cents and diesel up 104 cents against the 20 February 2026 pre-conflict baseline. The Reserve Bank raised the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29 September 2026, citing the broadened Middle East conflict and much higher global energy prices.
Those household numbers have drivers beyond resource policy alone: a 2026 oil shock, rebate timing, and interest rates. They still sit beside record resource exports. Juxtaposition is not causation.
The hypothesis this series will test, and it is a hypothesis, not a finding, is the claim that Australians do not benefit from the natural resources under their feet. What keeps the question alive: real wages down over five years beside record resource exports, PRRT alone a thin slice of LNG export value, lithium shipped mostly as concentrate, fifty IEA days with Australia last among importing members, and vanadium first in the world with zero output. What complicates it: WA royalty collections, GST redistribution, the 2026 Budget fuel reserve, the gas reservation bill now before the House, and processing loans plus a strategic minerals reserve on paper. Both sides of the ledger are real. Neither side is a verdict.
Still unanswered: the full company-tax take of the top miners and LNG producers; whether critical-minerals offtakes actually close; what the Explanatory Memorandum locks in for east-coast gas; how much domestic processing arrives after 2027; and whether household living standards move with the ground's fortune or only with global shocks. The minerals are under our feet. The habit is above them.
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