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Introduction and acknowledgements
Thank you, Marghanita [Margi] Johnson [CEO of the Australian Aluminium Council] and good evening, everyone.
I want to acknowledge at the outset the Ngunnawal People, the Traditional Owners of the land where Parliament House sits.
I also acknowledge industry leaders joining us tonight, including representatives from Alcoa, Rio Tinto, Capral, South32, Tomago, Alpha HPA, and QAL.
I also acknowledge my parliamentary colleagues here this evening.
Aluminium and the national interest
Australia is one of the few countries with an end-to-end aluminium supply chain: from bauxite mining and alumina refining to smelting and fabrication.
It’s worth remembering why Australia wanted a mine-to-market capability in aluminium in the first place.
At the height of the Second World War, with supply chains disrupted by conflict in this region, government and industry realised how important this capability was for Australian military and civilian life.[1]
For food preparation and storage, vehicle and aircraft manufacturing, and much else.
Australia chose to equip itself with capabilities in aluminium smelting from 1955, beginning with Bell Bay; bauxite mining from the 1960s, beginning with Alcoa’s project at Jarrahdale in 1963; alumina refining from 1963 beginning with Kwinana; and fabrication capability across the economy during the post-war years.
A lot of what passes for debate about this sector in 2025 misses that great industrial history.
And we’ve made choices to keep value adding onshore while so many other mineral products were shipped overseas unprocessed.[2]
Much of that was led by state governments using publicly owned and built generating capability to secure long term energy contracts, locking in industrial investment in aluminium smelting.
Aluminium, alumina and bauxite have always served a national interest and economic resilience objective for Australia.
And they still do.
Pressures on Australian aluminium
I do want to spend a bit of time talking about the cocktail of challenges in this sector.
High energy costs and privatised electricity generators add further pressure.
Global overcapacity, trade uncertainty and subsidies in other markets are putting substantial pressure on alumina refiners and smelters.
And each industrial facility has its own story.
In NSW, for example, it isn’t easy to build the bridge from the affordable, state-owned coal-fired power of the 20th century to the volumes of cheaper, cleaner renewable energy of this century.
This is an enormous national challenge. It shouldn’t be a forum for hyper-partisanship around these points. I know it sounds like a naïve point.
But spirit we brought to the post-war reconstruction of the Australian economy, that Australian spirit should be operating here.
There’s plenty of room for disagreement and argument – the government is not glass-jawed about these questions.
But we should celebrate when we get things right – when industry gets things right – and when things go well. And when things are tough, we should work together to achieve important national objectives.
The Tomago facility is a really important one. We will keep working with Jerome and the owners of the facility, the NSW Government and trade unions on these questions.
Bell Bay Aluminium in Tasmania is different again. It’s up in lights at the moment. I’m hoping to see some progress in relation to that facility soon.
The choice to build the southern hemisphere’s first aluminium smelter – at Bell Bay – was informed by the promise of co-location with cheap hydroelectric power.[3]
And of course, it’s a different story again in Queensland.
Choosing a future for Aluminium
It’s an extraordinary time to be Minister for Industry and Innovation. Lots of pressure, but extraordinary opportunities.
The meeting with President Trump a few weeks ago put industrial policy, critical minerals and the aluminium sector at the heart of the US-Australia bilateral relationship.
That’s an enormous opportunity for this sector.
The first of these projects, the Alcoa-Sojitz Gallium Project at Wagerup in WA, will extract gallium from the alumina byproducts at that refinery – leading to more good jobs and a compelling future for that facility.
That’s a great thing for Australia.
The last thing I want to say is that I’m proud of the reforms that we’re making in the area of anti-dumping.
Jim Chalmers, Don Farrell and I announced a remarkable shift for Australian anti-dumping policy – to remove from the Productivity Commission the function that they have exercised for many decades, managing safeguards which are so important for the anti-dumping regime, and to merge that into the Anti-Dumping Commissioner’s role.
That is an enormous opportunity for us. I’m grateful to colleagues for the support to make that change.
It means we will build a fit-for-purpose, modern regime in Australia to tackle the dumping challenges that we will face in a much tougher global environment.
There’s still more work to do there. It will require legislation.
Again, on this issue, I’m really grateful to Margi, and to the sector – particularly those in the sector who stand up and make applications on behalf of not just themselves, but also others. That is a really good contribution from Capral, for example.
That is one reform. There is so much more work to do.
Conclusion
I’m absolutely mobilised by the importance of this sector.
And I really look forward to being there on the tough days and on the good days as well as we work through all of these questions in the national interest.
[1] Australian Aluminium Council, ‘Australia’s Aluminium Industry: 65 years young’, https://aluminium.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/210721-Australias-Aluminium-Industry.pdf
[2] David Meredith and Barrie Dyster, Australia in the Global Economy; Continuity and Change, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p 328.
[3] Craig Duncan, ‘The Aluminium Industry in Australia’, Geographical Review, vol. 51, no. 1 (Jan 1961): 23; Henry Reynolds, A History of Tasmania, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p 261.
