Poor old Lynas Corp - it never rains but it pours.

We all thought the "Malaysia factor" was well and truly behind the rare earths producer. And then back comes the old "recalcitrant", as Paul Keating once (in 1993) described Mahathir Mohamad, now back in the saddle in Kuala Lumpur and throwing a cloud over Lynas's operations in that country.

There has been some press comment over the past week suggesting that the Western Australia government could think about allowing Lynas to build a new plant in that state.

What seems to have been forgotten is that WA, some 26 years ago, basically okayed such a treatment plant - not for Lynas (it was nine years old in 1992 and living as Lynas Gold NL, although there had been a company with the same name back in the 1930s) bu...