Between 2014 and 2018, mining engineering enrolments in Australia fell by 68 percent and completions declined by 65 percent — a collapse the Young Guns session at ASPI’s 2026 Darwin Dialogue flagged as a strategic problem, not just an educational one.
ASPI’s 2026 Darwin Dialogue: the Young Guns experiment
In April, ASPI introduced a new session at its Darwin Dialogue titled “Young Guns: Ideas from Emerging Thinkers,” deliberately inserting early‑career professionals into a forum traditionally populated by senior figures. The session narrowed its focus to the assumptions, bottlenecks and trade‑offs that could prevent Australia from delivering on critical‑minerals ambitions, while the broader Dialogue examined trusted and diversified critical minerals supply chains.
Organisers framed the experiment as more than symbolic. The Young Guns contributors pushed the conversation toward practical constraints and implementation pressures, providing “practical, grounded and, at times, uncomfortable” perspectives that tested long‑held assumptions across government, industry and academia.
Critical‑minerals policy: dilution and misplaced assumptions
Speakers warned that the current broad definition of critical minerals risked diluting policy focus and investment. They cautioned against equating policy effort with automatic payoffs, urging realism about the resource base: “we should not delude ourselves into thinking that we have equivalent deposits to the Chinese,” one speaker said.
That caution animated a recurring theme in the session: strategy is necessary but not sufficient. Planning for sovereign industrial capability, scaled production and strengthened defence resilience — all named ambitions in the Dialogue — will encounter real constraints if policy priorities are too diffuse or premised on optimistic assumptions about geology and capital alone.
Workforce shortages: geoscientists, technical specialists and shrinking supply pipelines
Participants emphasised a growing mismatch between aspiration and available skills. The session highlighted workforce shortages among geoscientists and technical specialists essential to exploration, extraction and processing. Industry bodies have warned that the sector faces an ageing workforce and a constricting supply pipeline, a dynamic the enrolment and completion declines between 2014 and 2018 make plain.
Speakers argued that demand for mining occupations has collapsed at the same time Australia is attempting to expand sovereign capability, scale production, strengthen defence resilience and develop northern Australia — all competing for the same shrinking pool of engineers and technical specialists.
Rigid hierarchies and the underuse of early‑career professionals
The Young Guns session raised institutional issues as stark as technical ones. Early‑career professionals, the forum found, are often required to bide their time within rigid hierarchical structures and outdated decision‑making processes, expected to execute the ideas of others rather than meaningfully contribute to strategic decisions.
That underutilisation carries costs. The session argued that analysts, operators, technologists and industry professionals working closest to operational pressures can identify where policy assumptions have already broken down — long before those problems reach senior decision‑makers. Bringing those voices forward, the contributors said, increases the likelihood that uncomfortable questions are raised early enough to matter.
NATO’s 2020 precedent and the case for institutional change
Speakers pointed to NATO’s 2020 establishment of the NATO 2030 Young Leaders Group as a concrete precedent. That group provided recommendations directly to secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on resilience, emerging technologies and future threats. Several priorities raised through the process — including resilience, technology competition and Indo‑Pacific engagement — later became more prominent within NATO’s broader 2030 agenda and Strategic Concept discussions.
The implication offered at Darwin was straightforward: structures that invite early‑career input can change the timing and content of strategic agendas. Young people are not always right, the session conceded, but they raise questions early enough to shift policy before failure forces adaptation.
Policymakers and regulators, industry bodies and early‑career professionals
- Policymakers and regulators: will need to narrow policy focus where necessary and recognise implementation constraints, rather than assuming broad definitions of critical minerals will automatically attract the right investment or workforce.
- Industry bodies and mining employers: face the immediate challenge of reversing falling enrolments and completions and addressing an ageing workforce if scaled production and sovereign capability targets are to be met.
- Early‑career professionals and educators: are positioned to surface operational mismatches and skills gaps; the session argued they should be invited into decision processes rather than delayed by hierarchical gatekeeping.
Australia’s national security and industrial ambitions are increasingly defined by delivery: moving from strategic statements to mines, plants, supply chains and resilient capability. The Young Guns session at ASPI’s 2026 Darwin Dialogue argued that doing that reliably will require more than senior expertise and grand plans; it will require institutional change that brings early‑career practitioners into discussions about assumptions, trade‑offs and implementation before failures force adaptation. Will Australia’s institutions act on that lesson or wait until delivery pressures make the choice for them?
