RICHARD KING, HOST: 13 past 7. Joining me now on the studio, we've spoken a number of times on the phone, actually you've been in here before, haven't you, Tim?
SENATOR TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: I have, I have.
HOST: Federal Energy and Innovation Minister.
AYRES: Industry, Industry.
HOST: Industry.
AYRES: I don't – I'm not the Energy Minister, Chris Bowen's the Energy Minister.
HOST: That's right. The man under fire.
AYRES: Always, always.
HOST: Well, we could do with a bit of innovation in here, if you can tell.
AYRES: I don't reckon this studio's changed much since about 1984.
HOST: And we've got a bit of Jurassic – I call it the hybrid studio, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
AYRES: It's a terrific place, really good to be here with you.
HOST: Well, you've been here for a couple of days, and I believe with the National Reconstruction Fund Board. There was a function last night?
AYRES: Yeah. The National Reconstruction Fund is our $15 billion fund that's there to provide loans and equity to support manufacturing capability in Australia. So I wanted to make sure that the fund came to Newcastle, that they spent a couple of days here – Board, senior management – meeting with manufacturing businesses. And we had an event last night in town with 150 Hunter Valley manufacturers. It was really good.
And for me, having spent a lot of time up in the Hunter Valley as a trade union official and as the Assistant Minister for Future Made in Australia, it was good to be in a room full of friends.
HOST: Right. And you were in the Hunter Valley yesterday at Muswellbrook with an announcement, where I think $5 million where you’re helping to transform a couple of mine sites –
AYRES: Yeah, we're backing in –
HOST: – Mount Arthur and –
AYRES: That's right, Mount Arthur, and down around Lake Macquarie. At Mount Arthur, for example, the business has made a decision to close in 2030. I want to make sure that fantastic mine site, and all of the fabrication workshops and maintenance workshops around that, are being used for future industry.
And this is a downpayment on delivering on that; $5 million to do a master plan for both facilities to make sure they are ready for new investment the moment those mines close.
HOST: I can remember some years ago BHP said rehabilitating Mount Arthur, which I think is the largest mine in the Hunter Valley –
AYRES: It's the biggest coal mine in the country, I think, Mount Arthur. It's a massive – you know, for listeners in Muswellbrook, if you fly over Muswellbrook, Mount Arthur's a massive piece of infrastructure, and the company's got the responsibility of rehabilitating the site.
HOST: I can remember years ago BHP said, "Forget it, it's going to be too expensive, we can't do that on our own".
AYRES: Well, they have got on obligation to – as part of all of these mining leases. Mines have a beginning and an end, just when the resource becomes too expensive to extract, or runs out. The mine's got a responsibility to rehabilitate the facility properly.
I am interested in the industrial part of it, very small part of that footprint, where there's pre‑existing capability, big fabrication sheds. In the case of that facility, it's on the corner of the Golden Highway going out to the Central West renewable energy zone; the New England Highway heading to the north for the New England renewable energy zone; it's right on the railway line; it's got fantastic fabrication and maintenance facilities. I would like to see that facility keep going beyond the life of the mine and provide good blue collar jobs for Muswellbrook and the surrounding communities.
HOST: Right. But the hole in the ground, I mean that stays a hole in the ground, doesn't it?
AYRES: Well, BHP have got to figure that out with the New South Wales Government. It is, as you say, a giant hole in the ground. There are some pretty interesting –
HOST: People don't appreciate how big those are.
AYRES: Yeah.
HOST: You stand at one of those open cut voids and it's a couple of hundred metres down to the bottom. I think I went to a Glencore mine, it was about 300 metres from where we were standing to the bottom.
AYRES: Oh, yeah. I think many Australians don't appreciate the scale, and you can't appreciate the scale just from the photos, you have to go there.
But look, they've got obligations. They've got some interesting plans, and they've got that responsibility to recover the environment; that's what locals would expect. But I just want to make sure the industrial facilities are secured for the future too.
HOST: Well, I mentioned one earlier, there's one at Lake Macquarie, an old mine which has been turned into a race track, which I think will be ready next year. I mean you're only limited by your imagination.
AYRES: Yeah, some of these will be filled with water and be facilities as well, but you know, each of them have got a responsibility to fix it up for the Hunter community, and there's sections of the bush around here that are full of old mines.
HOST: Right. My guest, Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres, who will be in the Hunter today. You've got another roundtable. There was one last night, you've got another one today, and part of that will be Molycop, and I know the union there have been jumping up and down about what they describe – and the company as well – the dumping of cheap Chinese train wheels, which has threatened the viability of their plants here in Waratah. What do we do about this, this dumping of cheap materials?
AYRES: Well, if I can stay off the specific for a second, because I've got particular responsibilities here when and if the Anti‑Dumping Commission makes recommendations to me about how we deal with these questions, but in the broad, dumping is a big problem for Australian manufacturing; where there are economies that are subsidising production in an unfair way, where the mining of resources, the energy going in, the transport production is all subsidised, that creates real challenges in structural steel and aluminium in a range of product areas.
And we made a commitment as a government to smarten up our anti‑dumping regime. We've made very good progress on those questions. We’ve announced structural reforms to toughen up our anti‑dumping regime and make it fit‑for‑purpose in a world which is even tougher than it was five years ago in trade terms.
That will require legislation, so we're out for a very short consultation process. I want industry, including local firms like Molycop, to have their say about the future structure. I want to see ambition here to deliver the best possible outcome for Australian manufacturing.
HOST: Coming up to 19 past 7 now, Friday morning on 2HD. A lot's been said, and I've spoken to the now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but when he was Opposition Leader, one of his cause celebres was the high‑speed rail. Infrastructure Australia have now sort of green lighted going to the next phase. A lot of people say, look, this is not going to happen in my time. I spoke to Joel Fitzgibbon, he said, "One of the problems is with fast rail, everybody wants it to stop at their place". Are we likely to see this some time in the future, or is this just a bit of a thought bubble?
AYRES: Well, it's much more than a thought bubble, of course. You've got a Prime Minister who was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, absolutely committed to those issues, to delivering better infrastructure and better transport for industry and people in regional Australia.
There's a High Speed Rail Authority, there's planning works, there's feasibility works that have been going on now since the Government was elected. You're right to point out these are long‑term projects; you don't build a high‑speed rail in a week, it takes many years to execute all of the planning, but you've got to start somewhere.
HOST: Well, and as one who commutes to Sydney regularly, if it only took an hour to get there by train, I think it would be wonderful.
AYRES: Well, just imagine how much that would change our lives, both in Sydney and in Newcastle, and it would be a very important structural change in, not just commuters' experience, but the way people live.
The Hunter Valley is a fantastic part of the world, and the more people who can live and work here the better.
HOST: Well, there's about 1,000 to 1,500 people that work at the Tomago Aluminium Smelter; the suggestion has been that your Government will provide cheap electricity via Snowy Hydro and Red Energy to keep Tomago going beyond 2028, the end of their current contract. Is that likely to happen, that we as the taxpayer will subsidise the future of Tomago Aluminium Smelter?
AYRES: We are working very hard as a government to leave no stone unturned around the future of that facility. It is Australia's youngest aluminium smelter, built in 1984, it, as you say employs 1,500 people. It makes a very significant part of our aluminium metal. It is an efficient facility, it uses about 12 per cent of New South Wales's electricity, which is extraordinary when you think about it, one facility –
HOST: And 40 per cent of their total costs is electricity –
AYRES: That's right, that's right, so –
HOST: – so there's a big impact on the feasibility of the company.
AYRES: So, we are paying very close attention. From the moment that I was appointed to this portfolio – significant work had been undertaken by Government in the lead‑up to the election. This has been an almost daily preoccupation, I can tell you. We have all of the machinery of government directed towards working with the owners of the facility and the New South Wales Government.
Of course, what it requires to deliver an outcome here is a feasible business case, and it requires the Commonwealth and the State and the owners all to be on the same page. That is a complex task here, but I've been around that facility most of my working life. I know how important it is for the valley, and I'm working very hard to do the very best that we can to secure it for the future.
HOST: And affordable energy, that's a hot topic at the moment.
AYRES: Yeah, oh, absolutely. You know, we have had a decade, under the previous government, where 24 out of 28 coal‑fired power stations announced their closure or brought forward their closure. Those developments happened because, like a car, you know, a power station's got a life, whether it's a coal‑fired power station or a big solar or wind facility. None of them go forever. They have a productive life and they become more and more expensive to maintain.
In our coal power sector, we're having very significant unplanned outages every day of the week. Literally every day of the week there is an unplanned outage. That's the key driver of costs at the moment in the electricity system, and we lost a decade where 24 out of these 28 power stations announced their closure and nothing happened because our opponents, you know, who were then in government, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison, were arguing amongst themselves then in the way that they're arguing amongst themselves now, and couldn't land a stable policy framework.
And when you do that, when the preoccupation is with internal drama, then you can't deliver the outcome that the community and industry need, and if you've got a predisposition towards wrecking, which is what some of these characters do, they're all about the drama and wrecking, they don't care about the national interest, it's Australians who pay.
HOST: I'll give you a free kick here; do you agree with Hollie Hughes that the Liberal Party's a rebel at the moment?
AYRES: Hollie Hughes, well, yeah, I mean –
HOST: Hollie Hunter, I should say. Holly Hughes, the former Senator.
AYRES: Yeah, yeah, yeah –
HOST: The former Liberal Senator.
AYRES: Yeah, no, she used to be across the chamber from me.
HOST: Yes, she did.
AYRES: Look, I understand, you know, Liberals who are proper Liberals, not these sort of ultraconservative ratbags who now inhabit the other side –
HOST: Well, they've moved away from the Menzies Liberal values?
AYRES: Well, they've moved away from where Australians are. You know, mainstream Australians, you know, they appreciate that the energy challenges are significant. We're adults, right – the task in front of us is to modernise the electricity system so that it delivers for households and industry in an environment where there will be a sharply escalating requirement for electricity, for households, but particularly for business.
So there's Tomago Aluminium now there that's a legacy business, it's there. But the future demand for electrification is huge, and we're going to build a modern electricity system for Australia.
HOST: Well, I hope so.
AYRES: Well, that's the job in front of us.
HOST: Appreciate your time this morning, and – well, good luck with this roundtable coming up later today, Tim, much appreciate your time.
AYERS: Good to see you.
HOST: Have a good weekend, yes, good to see you too. Tim Ayres, our Federal Industry and Innovation Minister.
ENDS.
