KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Let's go live now to the Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia, Tim Ayres at BlueScope’s Port Kembla steelworks. Tim Ayres, thanks for your time. BlueScope obviously has a great deal of stake in getting the energy system right. Are they comfortable with your ambitious renewable plans?
SENATOR TIM AYRES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR A FUTURE MADE IN AUSTRALIA AND TRADE: Yeah, absolutely. I think big manufacturers like BlueScope, as you say, their futures are going to be shaped by this government's ambition on energy questions by our approach to a Future Made in Australia. There's two pathways ahead here, in an election that'll happen in the first half of next year, between a manufacturing future for Australia with Future Made in Australia and an ambitious approach on getting energy into the system at the right price and supporting major industry here to invest and a pretty cold, desolate, no growth, low productivity for a future for Australia under a sort of no policy framework except a hostility to manufacturing for Mr Dutton and Mr Taylor. I’ve been looking at some of BlueScope’s-
GILBERT: But their argument is- but I want to ask you, because their argument is, and they've made the point, that gas is a key [energy] source for many decades to come, do you need to convince your colleagues, many of them who are opposed to gas, including the Victorian Government, who have restricted gas exploration and had a moratorium on it?
SENATOR AYRES: That's why we've released the Future Gas Strategy. We want to get to, business wants to get to, the whole community except poor old Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor, sort of shouting at clouds, want to get to a low emissions future, competitive Australian industry and that pathway goes through gas for so many of these industrial processes. I want to get to green hydrogen in steel making, in iron pellet manufacture, in moving the critical minerals processing onshore, so that we're offering low emissions products to our partners overseas, 97% of whom have their own Net Zero target. So, we want Australia to have a manufacturing future. That’s the pathway we’ve followed. It goes through gas, Kieran, it goes through gas. That means more demand for gas.
GILBERT: Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor and the rest of their team, they're not opposed to Net Zero. In fact, they support it and nuclear is twenty-four-seven, zero emissions. Do you see why there are a lot of voters, and a lot of younger voters [who] are actually on board with that idea?
SENATOR AYRES: Mate honestly, like, even at the best-case scenario for their sort of nuclear pipe dream, as uncosted as it is, we know it's a giant cost, but uncosted, it's an answer that is somewhere in the 2040s to 2050s and provides 4% at best, at best 4%, of Australia's energy requirement. Imposed on communities, whether they like it or not. All of these projects, all around the world running decades over schedule, decades, running tens of billions of dollars over schedule, and the one idea that they've got would lead to higher prices and disinvestment in the immediate term. So, the tens of billions of dollars that we are seeing from the-
GILBERT: Just lift the ban. Just lift the ban, though.
SENATOR AYRES: But the problem is- just engage in that thought experiment for a second, Kieran. The message that that would send is that Australia is a basket case for energy investment without any policy certainty. What this government is delivering is policy certainty. 2022, five gigawatts into the electricity system built under this government. 2023, an additional six gigawatts into the energy system. More since February 23. We are approving new projects hand over fist at ten times the rate that coal mine facility projects are being approved. We are getting on with real investment. It's not a future thing, it is happening now. I'm here at BlueScope looking at part of what is a $2 billion package of investments, $300 million here in a new plate mill facility, that guarantees generations of future investment and activity. And it's predicated on sensible, rational energy policy. And we've just got these- it's the mad old uncle approach from Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor on this nuclear pipe dream, which is dangerous for future investment. It is a recipe for the world's best manufacturers starting up shop and going somewhere else.
GILBERT: Tim Ayres, talk to you soon. Thanks.
SENATOR AYRES: Good on you, Kieran. See you later.
ENDS.
