I want to, of course, acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.

 

Dan, thank you very much for that introduction. It's really good to see this tradition of Business New South Wales and McKell doing these kinds of events together and working together on the big questions for New South Wales.

 

198 years is a long time. The history of the Chamber of Manufacturers and the old Labor Council of New South Wales, cooperating and in conflict over the course of 198 years like that, has shaped Sydney, shaped New South Wales and shaped modern Australia.

 

I was just down at the Diageo offices with the Australian British Chamber of Commerce, and they played a foundational role in of course, Bundaberg Rum in Australia, and together, really, for me, this is just all about me having a day where rum and the Chamber of Manufacturers are in one place at the one time. That really says a lot about Sydney. Itt really does.

 

And I pay tribute to your former role as a senior health official, in what was a very challenging time for Australia and the world. And I think a lot of things are being said from the cheap seats at the moment about that response.

 

You and your colleagues and the then government had to work it out as you went.

 

One of the things that I think distinguished my party and opposition in the federal parliament was supporting initiatives that we might not have designed ourselves, because it was in the national interest and because we recognised the urgency that the times presented. A little bit of that coming back the other way wouldn't hurt at the moment, I have to say.

 

Ed, there couldn't be anybody more well equipped to serve as the CEO of the McKell Institute, at the moment. The times are, as you described, where the intersection of economic and foreign policy, trade policy and industrial policy really are shaping the modern moment, and you're in a very fine position to exercise policy leadership there.

 

There are a few other people in the room. Rachel Nolan's here, who I’m a terrific fan of, we're working very closely with Rachel on the future of rail in Australia. She's making a terrific contribution there.

 

My old friend Mick Veitch, former Shadow Minister for Agriculture in New South Wales, a boy from the bush who's made a real contribution to Labor in New South Wales. And Adam Marshall, who, despite my best efforts, I have not yet met, but he was the Member for where I grew up, in Glen Innes, and my dad says he's a very fine fellow. I don't think he's ever voted for you, but he reckons you're a very fine fellow. It's very good to see you here as well.

 

It is a real pleasure to be back at the McKell Institute. As a couple of the introductions have said, I was a Foundation director, and I take real pride in that. It was the right insight. Peter Bentley,

 

at the time as the foundation CEO, people like John Watkins and others who were engaged in it then just saw what a big contribution it could make to put McKell together to work with the policy parts of the trade union movement and the Labor Party, with civil society and with the business community to work on this.

 

The early contributions, the Homes for All Report, has shaped a lot of the modern thinking about housing policy. It's a big national contribution. Very proud of the role that the McKell Institute has played.

 

Of course, McKell himself was a towering figure in New South Wales and Australian politics. He led New South Wales during the Second World War, and with Chifley and Curtin, steered Australia through our darkest times.

 

And it's often forgotten that state government leadership then really mattered. Really mattered. He reached the heights of public life, including as a governor general, remarkably, only the second Australian at the time to be appointed to that Vice Regal role.

 

Before all of that, he was a boilermaker from Balmain. He lived Labor values, organising boilermakers in the Eveleigh railway workshops, and Eveleigh, at the time, was the largest and most technologically advanced workplace or factory outside of the United States and the United Kingdom.

 

Today, Eveleigh, which is adjacent to my electorate office, styles itself as edgy and modern. The refurbishment of the buildings that you see down there today was done in the 1990s by long-term unemployed men and women employed under the Keating government's One Nation program, which was part of the Keating government's overall response to the early 1990s recession.

 

I was there for that building program. Worked with them. They built something beautiful, actually, when you walk around there, but it's also a piece of critical infrastructure for Sydney and Australia's innovation and creative industries.

 

The rivets you see on the steel beams and the rail lines embedded in the concrete demonstrate its industrial legacy.

 

But the new innovations developed in that Eveleigh Australian Technology Park, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney Institute of TAFE Precinct, I see my old friend, Roy Green there, former dean of the business school at UTS, the innovations developed there.

 

The creative insights are what fuels new factories in our outer suburbs and in our regions. The place is both a monument to the steam age and the union struggles over 100 years that form Australian Labor, but it's also a sign pointing towards Australia's manufacturing and industrial future.

 

It tells us a lot about the late 20th century decline of Australian manufacturing.

 

How a lack of investment and a capacity to keep pace with the times and lack of vision from government led to its inevitable closure.

 

Just like what's happened to Australia's car industry.

 

Just over a decade ago, the factory doors closed at the Holden plant in South Australia for the last time. Soon after the Toyota and Ford factories closed down and left our shores for good.

 

Tens of thousands of workers from the car plants and people employed right through the manufacturing supply chain lost their jobs.

 

At Holden, the thousands of workers there not only lost their jobs, but the community around that factory lost a connection that formed a way of life for dozens of suburbs.

 

As the author, Royce Kurmelovs, wrote in his book The Death of Holden: “The factory out that way paid people's mortgages and rent, let them bring kids into a world that was predictable. It paid for dinner that night, breakfast in the morning, the shoes their kids wore to school, drinks at the pub after work, and when the factory shut down over Christmas, there was money for a holiday. People were comfortable because of it. It gave them enough that they had time to be happy. And then one day, you hear they put a bullet in that old line and told everyone it was for the best."

 

The effect on Holden workers in that community, of course, was devastating.

 

Research by Flinders University tracked a group of former workers and found that one third retired and one third struggled to find work.

 

The rest found work, but they weren't in jobs that gave them the sense of security and needing that they had before.

 

The researcher, Dr Gemma Beale, said for these workers, losing their job was like grieving the loss of a second family.

 

She said they really talked about their colleagues as family who had really heartwarming stories about shared meals and about working across cultural and language barriers.

 

You see Tony Abbott and the previous government set that industry offshore with no plan for that he community's future.

 

The car industry's manufacturing capability and all of those engineering skills and management capacity went to waste, severing links right along the supply chain with many of them cut off forever.

 

Imagine the state that we would be in with a modern car industry in Australia in terms of battery supply chains, electric vehicle production, and the way that Australia will be integrated into global supply chains in an utterly different way than the way that we are now.

 

Now, remember that back in 2009 Tesla got a $465 million grant from the US government alone that saved its life.

 

This was besides the tens of billions of dollars that Washington injected to save its car industry at around that time.

 

Now I'm retelling the story of the Holden closure, not just because I'm still angry about it, because I am, but because it tells us several things about our society, the economy and the role of modern government.

 

Our task in government today, though, is to deal with the world as it is, not the way that I wish that it was.

 

Of course, we can't undo what's happened to Australia's car industry, as much as I believe we're still counting the costs, it's too late.

 

My point is that Australia can be better at industrial policy, including what government does to engage with workers and communities so that they benefit from economic and industrial change.

 

I've always believed that part of the point of government is to manage an economy that works for all Australians.

 

That means an active social democratic state, which understands the country's economy and society are woven together, and the damage to either tears at the whole fabric, because unless government takes an active role in reducing the inequalities that arise from economic and industrial change, we risk undermining our own democratic society.

 

And that's why the Albanese Labor Government is taking deliberate action to address the serious challenges facing our country over the decades that stretch in front of us.

 

That's what a Future Made in Australia is all about, meeting those challenges with a sense of mission.

 

Firstly, of course, the twin challenges of climate change and emissions reduction.

 

The cumulative decisions of almost all of the world's economies to cut emissions and to decarbonise global energy, transport, agriculture and industrial processes, entails enormous opportunity and risk for Australia.

 

For Australia, 98 per cent of our trade is with partners that have their own net zero targets. This represents a once in a generation opportunity to reshape our future economy in the national interest.

 

Australia has all of the mineral resources required by this great industrial transformation. Other countries around the world have vast quantities of some of the resources that are required. Australia is blessed, really.

 

We have vast quantities of all of the minerals that are required in this industrial transformation. And we have the world's best solar and wind resources, and in geographical terms, in terms of space, boundless plains to share and proximity to the fastest growing region of the world in human history.

 

So it's the intersection of our geography, our industrial resources and technological capabilities that Australia's future economic advantage applies—but only if the Australian Government consistently backs it.

 

Greg Combet, as the outgoing Chair of the government's Net Zero Economy Agency, likened the scale and significance of this action to post war reconstruction, and we're getting on with it.

 

The second challenge is, of course, heightened geostrategic competition and the profound increases that are going on around the world in industrial subsidies by major economies.

 

Being resilient in the face of these challenges means we have to apply far more ambition across all arms of Australia's national power, including our economic power.

 

The Australian Government can't match the scale of subsidies that we've seen elsewhere around the world.

 

But with thoughtful, deliberate, conscious statecraft, by catalysing the public investment to crowd in the private sector, Australia can lift investment in areas that are at current and future comparative advantages, and work with our trading partners to make sure that we get the most efficient and secure relationships in the global markets and supply chains framed by, of course, the rules based order.

 

As Assistant Trade Minister, I know that we can't compete if global trade was conducted by raw market power alone.

 

Just like every other middle-sized economy, Australia needs a rules-based trading system, rules to support our open, flexible economy so we can provide security to our trading partners for the goods and services that they need.

 

But at the same time, economic openness represents its own vulnerability to economic coercion and other national security risks across our key supply chains.

 

The government's response to these two challenges that are highlighted isn't to retreat from the world, to retreat from global trade, or to disconnect from markets because of these risks.

 

Instead it is to respond with a strategy backed by real resources and a commitment to drive it. That's a Future Made in Australia.

 

As the Prime Minister has said, If you could have designed a global opportunity for Australia, you couldn't have chosen a better starting point than this.

 

If the world is to achieve its net zero transformation, it will need more clean energy and more of the resources and technology that go into it.

 

As I've said, all the metals and minerals, all the rare earths and resources are in abundance right beneath our feet. We'll map the geological potential of our entire country to get the complete picture of our critical minerals and ground and groundwater.

 

We'll use production tax incentives to process critical minerals here, instead of losing value and shipping them offshore.

 

And use production tax credits for green hydrogen to develop new domestic manufacturing capabilities for green iron and green metals and green steel.

 

By taking this action, Australia sets up these industries to be rewarded for scale and success.

 

Now that in my view, that statecraft, is how Australia becomes an indispensable part of the new global economy.

 

And there are some who would say that this is the hackneyed phrase “picking winners”, but I say that there is no lazier phrase in economics.

 

The Future Made in Australia Act and the national interest framework will make clear that value for money, discipline, analysis and rigour will underpin our approach.

 

What the government is doing is backing the most productive and prospectively productive parts of our economy to create a system where winners can emerge. That's what strategy by an active Labor government looks like.

 

As I mentioned before, we have to tackle economic inequality or risk people disengaging from democratic society.

 

That's the lesson from past industrial transformations, and it's this simple idea that workers and community and communities in the country's industrial regions and outer suburbs should shape their own future, because if they don't, they will feel left behind, and they will feel angry and anger is an emotion easy to manipulate, especially by those who offer populist and simplistic policies at the extreme left or extreme right.

 

There is a better way. And that's through government taking deliberate action with the people that matter, the workers and their families and the communities and businesses in those regions.

 

It's government working with them where they want to be at the centre of national economic and industrial effort to bring all of their skills and capacity for hard work into good jobs that matter for Australia's future, to be part of building Australia's future.

 

It's why the Albanese Government has established the Net Zero Economy Authority to ensure that workers and communities aren't just cast aside like they were by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments.

 

To drive investment to create good jobs in new businesses and industries in places like the Hunter Valley, Collie in WA, South Australia's Upper Spencer Gulf, or the La Trobe Valley in Victoria, where I think I’m spending the next couple of days talking to businesses there.

 

I want to build support in regional communities for the construction of Australia's new energy system, and for their role at the centre of Australia's future energy security.

 

Now there's this slightly cloying phrase, “social licence”. It's right up there with, you know, “lived experience”, sort of makes me instantly twitch.

 

But in fact, social licence is essential, because it's fair to say that there are still mixed views in regional communities about where these renewable projects would go.

 

Energy companies, of course, need to make the case and go through the approvals, just like any other project, whether it's a supermarket or a coal mine, projects need to work their way through that process.

 

But I've spent some time in these communities, including in Uralla, where there's a new 720 megawatt solar and battery project delivering power to Queensland and New South Wales households, 400 megawatts already. It's a giant, giant project.

 

The project is on agricultural land. It's land that's been grazed by sheep at the same time. Despite all of the scare campaigns by Mr Joyce and some of the sort of loopier social media campaigns about the impact of solar and wind on agriculture. Sheep are all over the project.

 

I mean, I'm no expert. My family were in cattle. I don’t know anything about sheep, but the sheep look pretty happy to me, thousands of them.

 

So there's a job to do there in agriculture, to convince farming communities that there is a straightforward way through all of this, but I also believe that the bridge to social licence is reinforced by good jobs in local manufacturing.

 

So for that idea, let me finish by sharing what I'm doing now, and over the next couple of months.

 

I'm hitting the road to understand how more Australian structural steel can be used in renewable infrastructure projects like onshore wind, offshore wind, solar and the transmission infrastructure.

 

Just think about a wind project for a moment.

 

Most of what you see are huge conical tubes.

 

Out in the ocean, one offshore wind tower can use between 1,100 to 3,500 tonnes of steel, depending on the design.

 

The wind towers that you see on land use around 600 tonnes of steel. Now, we have a proud history of steel making and plate steel making in this country.

 

Almost none of it goes into wind towers being built around Australia. Surely, using Australian steel in wind towers is a capability within our reach.

 

But unlike the previous Morrison government, you won't catch me blaming the states or pointing the finger at developers or operators.

 

What I'm doing now, with the support of the Government, is engaging with all of the participants to work out how the Albanese Government can deliver more Australian structural steel, more good regional jobs, lower the costs of and secure wind generation supply chains in the national interest.

 

Because if I was to say that Australia is rolling out the renewable energy infrastructure on time, because we've built the scale and done it efficiently, and we have steel and manufacturing workers standing next to wind towers made with Australian steel, saying proudly that they have built that and contributed to this national energy security and energy modernization effort, and we have local communities that see good jobs coming from new manufacturing, then I think it is worth being ambitious about the future.

 

That's what a Future Made in Australia is all about.

 

Thanks very much.

 

ENDS.