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FRIDAY, 14 MARCH 2025
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet, the Awabakal and Worimi people.
I am really grateful to all of you, to Bob Hawes the Hunter Business CEO, for giving me this opportunity to set out the Albanese Government’s agenda for industrial diversification and for investment here in the Hunter and for Australia.
I also want to acknowledge the Net Zero Economy Authority who is here today. The Albanese Government established and legislated the Authority in this term to do important work in key industrial regions, including the Hunter.
To make sure that the Australian government is there, backing industrial communities, actively facilitating new investment to deliver good new jobs and to make sure that when ageing power stations retire, there is a plan for every worker and every acre of industrial land.
As we close the first term of the Albanese Labor Government, I am thankful for the chance to reflect on what’s been done and the steps ahead to secure Australia’s manufacturing future.
Where we are at
This Government has a clear-eyed assessment of the risks and opportunities and the scale of Australia’s challenge.
Australia cannot afford to be complacent about our future peace and prosperity.
Our region, and the world, are rapidly changing.
We’ve seen a deteriorating global security environment, including a three-year war in Europe—
Intensifying geopolitical competition in Australia’s region—
A breakdown of global trade norms that Australian businesses and workers rely on—
And intensive global competition for new industrial investment particularly for defence, strategic and energy related manufacturing.
In response, the Albanese Government has worked with global partners to call for greater accountability in how governments back their industries.
Just this week, the OECD released a report[1] showing how government support boosts large manufacturing firms’ market share.
The report illustrates how nations like Japan, the EU, and China[2] are investing heavily in their industries.
China’s subsidies are the biggest, and China is now responsible for 55% of global steel and aluminium production.
There is no doubt there’s greater global competition underway to attract and develop the industries needed for a low-carbon economy.
Whether steel, aluminium, or more complex manufactured products, countries are looking after their national interest.
Steel and aluminium have been in the news a bit this week—so let’s focus on steel for a moment.
Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of iron ore, but—despite proximity to key markets and the enormous industrial capability in steel towns like Newcastle, Wollongong and Whyalla—we account for only a small percentage of global steel production.
The lesson here is clear: we must diversify the products we trade, move up the value chain, and manufacture higher-value goods.
We must be ambitious with our policy to be more economically resilient, more capable and more secure.
To do this, we must protect existing industries—such as through our Whyalla intervention—and attract investment in Australian iron and steelmaking to secure our manufacturing future.
We cannot sit on our hands—like the last government—and let our critical Australian capability dwindle till it disappears.
This is why the Albanese Labor Government’s approach to manufacturing is a radical departure from the near decade long, awful arc of inaction from Abbott to Turnbull to Morrison.
A government who oversaw a collapse in investment, in manufacturing and engineering jobs, and where deliberate policy forced the automotive industry offshore.
This week’s decision by the Trump Administration to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel is a retrograde step.
It will lift prices for American consumers and achieve little else.
It is not a road Australia will go down—particularly when this government is so focused on cost-of-living pressures for Australian families and businesses.
While we continue to work with the US to seek an exemption and to deal with the other trade questions on the agenda, we remain focused on building Australia’s manufacturing future.
This term, the Albanese Government has built a package of smart, large-scale and targeted measures, and will be seeking a second term to fully implement, to entrench, and to deliver the benefit of new investment in regions like the Hunter.
Where we are going
Future Made in Australia is the spearhead of the largest pro-manufacturing package in Australian history.
It is designed—alongside the industrial policy work led by Ed Husic and electrical system modernisation led by Chris Bowen—to back local manufacturers and incentivise new factories so our regions have good jobs for decades to come.
It is our plan of action to build Australia’s economic future.
We’ve embedded clear national interest principles to guide the government investment needed to transform and diversify our industries.
And our clear and pragmatic policy approach is attracting the necessary private investment.
Since we came to Government, 15 GW of renewable generation and storage entered the grid. Under the Opposition, 3 GW of energy left the grid.
Building a competitive, low cost, low emissions and reliable electricity system is critical to keeping traditional firms producing here and securing the investment in new industries.
Half-baked decisions in energy policy—like announcing a $600 billion, taxpayer-funded nuclear reactor ‘plan’ to produce 4% of Australia’s energy needs sometime in the 2040s—will inevitably deter future investment and offshore current manufacturers to more stable locations.
We know this is true because it happened under the previous government—policy paralysis in energy markets coupled with weak industrial policy meant disinvestment, industrial decline and weaker regional economies.
The Coalition’s plan actually requires a 50% reduction in large scale industrial electricity use from 2030.
Under the Frontier Economics nuclear modelling, electricity intensive manufacturing has to move offshore in order to make way for Peter Dutton‘s expensive, risky, unrealistic nuclear power plan.
It kills the patient while pretending to cure them.
Let’s take another example that has been prominent this week and has a deep local resonance—Australia’s aluminium sector.
Tomago Aluminium and its owners could not have been clearer—they have embarked upon a shift to zero, or close to zero, emissions aluminium production.
They haven’t done that because they’re hippies—I don’t want to diminish their commitment to sustainability objectives—but they have set that course because that is what the market demands.
It’s a competitive advantage, leveraging cheap solar and wind energy backed by storage and gas.
That is why. And no matter how much Barnaby Joyce and Peter Dutton don’t like it, it is just not up for debate.
The question is: will this aluminium be produced here in places like Tomago and Gladstone, or will it be made elsewhere, like China or the Middle East, where government support is more favourable?
Well, I am on Australia’s side in this struggle—and so is the Albanese Government.
The Labor approach is to step in and back these firms to meet those competitive challenges and maintain Australian production.
We want aluminium smelters to stay here, in the Hunter, Gladstone, and Bell Bay.
We want to create and protect the tens of thousands of jobs along the supply chain.
That’s why the Albanese Government is supporting Australian-made aluminium, through a $2 billion aluminium production credit. Opposed by Peter Dutton and the Liberals.
That’s why the Albanese Government and South Australian Government are investing $2.4 billion in the future of Aussie-made iron and steel.
$500 million of this is from this Government’s Green Iron Investment Fund and will help the Whyalla Steelworks make iron using low or zero emissions energy.
Another $500 million of the Fund will be open to applicants right around Australia, for existing facilities and greenfield projects that can supercharge Australia’s world-leading iron ore industry to make iron and steel products right here.
And then there are the huge opportunities to use this Australian structural steel to build Australia’s modern electricity system.
Over the coming years, we’re going to need thousands of wind towers.
A few weeks ago, Anthony Albanese announced in the Illawarra that a re-elected Albanese Government will deliver a local industry strategy that includes lifting local content requirements.
Working with the States and Territories, businesses and unions, we will strengthen these requirements in line with what industry can deliver—so that when Governments buy renewable energy infrastructure, they buy local.
And we’re investing $500 million for local production so that wind towers and other elements of the renewables rollout are made here in regional Australia.
Instead of poor old Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien bouncing around the Hunter with Barnaby Joyce spreading misinformation—much of it copied from far-right foreign webpages about wind and solar—this government is unified around the national interest.
A blatantly sterile ideology and lack of imagination presumably drives Angus Taylor and Peter Dutton when they say that they would tear down this Future Made in Australia program.
It’s presumably why Angus Taylor, before joining parliament, urged the Australian aluminium industry to close and relocate to Asia.
That is what the character who wants to direct Australia’s economic policy believes. When he gave advice, he said aluminium smelting is uncompetitive and Australia should just export bauxite instead.
That’s 5,000 jobs in the Hunter, 3,000 Central Queensland jobs, and 1,000 direct and indirect Northern Tasmanian jobs at Bell Bay—gone.
Instead of dealing with the competitive challenges in aluminium his advice was to give up.
I think that’s why Angus Taylor and Peter Dutton were so fast out of the blocks to oppose Labor’s $2 billion aluminium production credit.
See at least Angus Taylor is consistent. He wanted to offshore the aluminium sector in 2012, and he still does.
If the Coalition actually cared about regions like the Hunter, we’d see their plan for jobs, their plan for globally competitive industries and their plan for cheap and consistent energy.
Under an Albanese government, Australian manufacturers will be stronger.
Wind towers will increasingly be made with Australian steel, with more opportunities for local manufacturers to participate in the billions of dollars of economic activity, with all the new good jobs and regional investment that represents.
For the Albanese Government these things are core to what we do.
Just like the Hunter is the key to our national success.
It will be important for us to continue to work together, to stay the course, and keep community at the forefront, as we get on with the Hunter’s and the national endeavour.
Thank you.
[1] https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/trump-should-use-smart-tariffs-to-target-china-s-steel-cheating-20250310-p5liaa
[2] P.12 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/how-governments-back-the-largest-manufacturing-firms_d93ed7db-en.html
