INDUSTRY PAPERS CANBERRA LAUNCH FORUM

MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY, CANBERRA

Good morning everyone.

 

I’d like to start by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of these lands. 

 

And thanks for that welcome Violet, I really appreciate that.

 

I have to say that in my role in the Future Made in Australia portfolio, but particularly in the trade portfolio, I agree with the sentiment Aunty Violet expressed about how we get these questions right following the referendum.

 

It want Australians understand how important it is to have 65,000 years of history – it is an enormous asset in global terms.

 

Let me thank the InnovationAus team for the Innovation Papers, it is a remarkable contribution that they make.

 

In Australia, every month, the information that comes out in InnovationAus is important for the public debate. But the Innovation Papers themselves are a powerful contribution to platform the importance of innovation and industry policy. They platform some of our brightest thinkers who make an enduring contribution – it is terrific to see all of you too.

 

My old mate Roy Green, who has championed innovation and industry policy, who has persisted, and made a powerful contribution for Australia. Kathy Foley too, who has made her own contribution.

 

I think the truth is there is something about this community of people who care deeply about Australia.

 

The world is changing fast, and in our own region, geostrategic competition is intensifying.

 

The rules that have helped drive economic growth in Australia are under pressure.

 

The worsening climate threatens food security and has consequences for peace and national security.

 

But in the face of these and many other pressures, the Albanese Government still see an opportunity to build a better and stronger and fairer Australia.

 

The truth is Australians understand change. We understand risk – we live on an island continent at the bottom of the world.

 

The Albanese Government wants to shape our own destiny at home and in the world.

 

Australians want to be woven into the Australian story. We want to feel part of a larger project.

 

That things aren’t just happening to us but that we are shaping the world around us.

 

And we can’t return to the complacency that characterised the Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison decade.

 

Australia has unlimited potential.

 

But we do not have unlimited time.

 

If we don’t seize this historic moment, it will pass.

 

If we don’t take this chance, we won’t get another.

 

This is a train, if I can wrangle a metaphor, that leaves the station once.

 

As the Prime Minister has said, if we don’t act to shape the future, the future will shape us.

 

Australia must build the industrial capability to solve national challenges and bring economic weight, technological capacity, investment and trade to contribute to our partners solving their key national challenges.

 

To give our people the skills and education required to navigate the challenges, but also to contribute to solving national challenges.

 

To lift national productivity.

 

To harness all our capacity, our national institutions, our people, firms and industry to make Australia more resilient in a more contested world.

 

The opportunity is there.

 

We live in the fastest growing region of the world in human history.

 

Southeast Asia is making two great transitions.

 

From low and middle income economies to middle and high income economies.

 

And from high emissions economies to net zero emissions economies.

 

Those two great transitions have equal weight. They represent enormous challenges but enormous opportunities for Australia.

 

Ninety-seven per cent of our trade by value is with partners who have net zero targets.

 

These trading partners need low-emission manufactured products, engineering and clean tech products, and the machinery to power their net zero commitments.

 

Australia has all of the resources required to connect to the industrial and economic transition of South-East Asia, the broader Ino-Pacific and indeed, globally.

 

Beneath our feet, we have the critical minerals needed to drive the energy transition. Some countries have some of the critical minerals required to drive the transition in great quantities, but Australia has all of them.

 

And above the ground we have a population of smart, skilled and resilient people – like all of you.

 

And above us the greatest wind and solar resources.

 

As I said before the only thing we don’t have is time to waste.

 

Our political opponents seem unable to grasp the historical moment.

 

When you look at the twin national challenges, climate, and security, and look around at the Senate Chamber, you have the Greens political party, see the urgency of the twin challenges of climate and energy, but dismiss the security challenge as not real.

 

Others, within the right of our political system, in the Liberal and National Party in particular, singularly focus on the security challenge but cannot bring themselves to accept the basic facts of physics, technology and economics engaged by the twin climate and energy challenges.

 

That leaves just Labor, without bipartisanship, to prosecute the national interest challenges, the overlapping questions of how to secure Australia’s position in a more difficult world, where our future can’t be taken for granted.

 

A Future Made in Australia

The government’s Future Made in Australia agenda — and legislation that is before the Parliament this fortnight —is the biggest pro-manufacturing package in Australian history.

 

An investment of almost $23 billion over the next decade.

 

It’s an opportunity to diversify and re-industrialise our economy, and to build a more productive, more competitive economy.

 

The world’s largest economies, China, the European Union and the United States are all leading aggressive interventions themselves.

 

The IMF, no great friend of industry policy, says there have been 2,500 industry policy measures worldwide over the last 12 months.

 

Australia need to act in our interests too.

 

Australia must send a clear market signal to the investment community around the world that Australia is a good place to invest, a competitive place to invest.

 

On that, our $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund is open for business.

 

The Fund will drive public and private investment in areas considered critical for the net zero transition, and underwrite key sectors that boost future capability, economic security, resilience.

 

Australia can be more than a farm and a quarry and a nice place to visit.

 

We can be a clean manufacturing powerhouse.

 

We can build a secure energy system and conquer technical challenges in new manufacturing that builds national resilience, security and a good jobs and good lives for our regional communities.

 

And once again show the ingenuity that’s been such a proud part of our national history.

 

I’ve seen this for myself, at places like the Hysata facility at Port Kembla, where the team invented the most efficient hydrogen electrolyser in the world.

 

And there is such a contrast between what passes for a political debate up there, where our opponents are all about talking Australia down, saying we can’t do these things, urging people to reach the conclusion we shouldn’t even try to do great things. Convincing Australians we are not up to the task.

 

For them, they hope to craft a political victory out of losing. That is the harping negativity of the position Peter Dutton, Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley have adopted.

 

Compare that with what I see when I go to our great industrial regions. Where Australians like you are working together with communities and institutions, TAFES and universities, state and local government, innovators and trade unions, to do great things. The debate led by Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor is letting those communities down.

 

We can see it in the quantum technologies being pioneered here in Australia by PsiQuantum’s Australian founders, and their mission to build the world’s first utility-scale computer in Brisbane.

 

And I see it in the creativity and resourcefulness of those I meet right across science and industry.

 

The truth is while we are making an enormous investment here, government can’t do this alone.

 

It needs you. It needs business, global investment capital, research institutions, trade unions – working together to solve Australian problems.

 

This is a whole-of-country effort. If we want a Future Made in Australia, the truth is we will have to work hard for it.

 

If we want a Future Made in Australia, if I can make a small partisan observation, the truth is in the first half of next year you are going to have to vote for it.

 

Thank you very much.

 

ENDS