Thank you very much, Jake. I want to also acknowledge the Ngunnawal people and pay respect to their Elders past and present.

Pru, I do want to say that the growth of ACITI is a very welcome development from my perspective and the Government's perspective. We need a stronger and healthier debate on these questions as we move through what are going to be some pretty challenging and stimulating decades for Australia.

I want to acknowledge George Mina, Deputy Secretary of DFAT, but also our former ambassador, as you would all know, to the World Trade Organization, also vitally engaged in all of these big challenges.

I was introduced at the Sydney Institute to give a speech there and Gerard Henderson said, “we welcome Tim Ayres, the Minister for the Future of Australia”. You know, I didn't argue, but it does reflect, as Jacob says, the Government’s sense of priority on these issues, and of course, the coordination challenge across government of making sure that all elements of Australian statecraft are pointed in the same direction. My job is to make a small contribution to that. 

And, of course, on the Future Made in Australia questions, I've been engaged in discussions in all of Australia's great industrial regions and suburbs over these issues. Over the last 18 months, and over the coming months as well. I want to share a little bit of that with you today, what I have learnt talking to workers and firms in those engineering regions about the competitive challenges that we face as a nation.

The big shifts are pretty illuminating. In places like Gladstone in Queensland, talking to manufacturers like Alpha HPA (which produces high purification alumina using less power) or the Aldoga solar farm (which is a massive solar farm that has a strong focus on incorporating Australian supply chains and local content into their development process), or at Gippsland, at Latrobe last week, talking to onshore and offshore wind developers and local supply chain firms about the challenges of the energy transition and their determination to make sure that their region benefits from what will be an enormous transformation.

And the message from those regions is clear. There is that sense of urgency about making sure that they are front-and-centre, and that the workers that are engaged in those industries are part of the answer in the national interest. And that their kids are too, and that their kids have futures in good jobs, good apprenticeships, engineering cadetships, pathways through university and building the economic capacity of those communities.

They welcome investment from Australian firms and from multinational companies, but most of all, they are focused on real jobs and real opportunities for them and their families.

There is certainly a deep ambivalence and scepticism in some of those regions about the benefits of trade and globalisation. For those communities they have seen not just jobs disappear offshore, but of course, over the last three or four decades, economic opportunity and good jobs have concentrated into our CBDs. And so, there is this pushback against globalisation from communities and workers when they see that the benefits of international economic engagement are spread too thinly for them.

Free and fair trade and a rules-based system is essential for a middle power like Australia. It's essential for workers in those communities. It's essential for the development of good jobs and opportunity, but it's under pressure here, and it's under pressure around the world.

We're seeing competition over rules and dysfunction in some parts of the global trading system and the exercise of coercive power by big players. Our responsibility in the Albanese Government is to position Australia and working Australians themselves to meet those challenges, to be on their side as we navigate what is going to be a very challenging number of decades in front of us at a time of growing uncertainty.

The Albanese Government has a plan for the future that draws upon Australia's strengths and positions us to be a renewable energy superpower. That maximises our economic security and engagement with our partners in the region.

That's where a Future Made in Australia is directed towards. But it's also directed towards those great industrial regions and outer suburbs where that industrial capability lies and where, smart discipline, effective government, and working in partnership with the private sector, can grow jobs and opportunities for those regions.

Now, of course, there isn't a single answer to the competitive challenge for Australia. We're coming off the back of the worst decade in recorded history in terms of productivity growth. There are significant challenges as we marshal national effort to deal with this. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the Government's economic team are driving a productivity agenda right across government.

It includes building a skilled and adaptable workforce. University reforms, fee-free TAFE, record investment in skills, reforms to income tax and student loan repayments, childcare that supports participation and changes to the migration system.

There is an alternative, sterile vision for the future of how we engage with the productivity and competitiveness challenge. It's the sort of Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor pull your socks up routine. More focus on cost cutting, less partnership between government and the private sector, more downward pressure on wages and good jobs and offshoring of key functions.

I'm always reminded of this, as Jacob said, as a younger trade union official brawling with the New South Wales Government about the future of rail contracts in that state, billions and billions of dollars of rail contracts sent offshore. It absolutely decimated regional communities – in particular the Hunter Valley – and cost those regional communities thousands and thousands of jobs, hundreds and hundreds of apprenticeship opportunities for school leavers that just didn't get access to good work. It crippled industrial capability in that region.

And what did it deliver? It delivered projects that ran hopelessly over budget, low-quality outcomes that had to be repaired when they arrived here in Australia, trains that didn't fit alongside stations or fit through tunnels. A victory of a sort of reverse patriotism, a sort of idea that Australia couldn't compete in these areas.

And, of course, the architect of that, Andrew Constance, is once again a candidate for office here, running for federal parliament just down the road in the south coast area of Gilmore.

There is that view, that pessimism, about Australia and Australia's capacity to compete, to work together to deliver high-quality outcomes, particularly in the manufacturing sector, that is so deeply ingrained in our opponents that they just can't grapple with the scale of the national challenge and the cooperative effort that is going to be required across Australia's institutions, including our trade unions and our firms, our universities, our research and development capabilities, to meet these big national challenges.

First of course is the net zero challenge which entails enormous risk for Australia. If we sit on our hands, if we return to the last decade of policy uncertainty and the sort of backwards and forwards signals to the investment community that over the Morrison, Abbott and Turnbull period basically said to global energy capability and to Australian firms in investment terms, don't bother. And so they didn't. That's why we had four gigawatts of capability leave the system and only one gigawatt of capability built. 

But it entails enormous opportunity. 98% of our trading partners have their own net zero targets, a once in a generation opportunity to reshape our economy in the national interest. Some of the countries that I meet with around the world have some of the mineral resources that are required for this transformation in large quantities. Australia has all of them in vast quantities, and we have the world's best solar and wind resources.

The challenge here, of course, is if we wait and just sit on our hands, our current competitive advantage and comparative advantage, and current industrial capability and competitiveness, are not sufficient to get us through to the other side.

It is not a set of challenges that the private sector should be left on its own to deal with, and it's not a set of challenges that working class communities in our outer suburbs and our industrial region should be left on their own to face either.

The Prime Minister said if you wanted to design a global opportunity for Australia, you couldn't have chosen a better place. The opportunities in green metals for our future are enormous. We are one of the world's largest suppliers of iron ore to the world, some of the best mining technology in the world.

People say a “dig and ship” economy in our west. It really underplays how strong our mining and resources sector is and how innovative and capable they are, but we can do more. And the opportunities of electrification, renewable energy, solar and wind and hydrogen of Australia – a once in a lifetime opportunity – a train that leaves the station only once.

And just some of these big questions are, of course, a challenge of imagination. But just consider it for a second, Australia having the capacity on our West Coast and in South Australia to manufacture green iron for our partners in the North Asian and Asian economies.

More broadly, what that would do in terms of our national capability moving up the value chain and national income, that would reconfigure industrial opportunities and investment opportunities for Australian firms and Australian workers in those industrial regions.

That is the prize in just that area, in green iron, that the Albanese Government is shooting for. Adding value here, removing the emissions of our key industrial partners in that big step in the steel making process, and building competitiveness and productivity, both for us and our partners.

Of course, ensuring that we remain competitive and attracting global investment, that doesn't mean just a future for Australia, going it alone or turning yields. It requires foreign investment.

I've seen amongst our opponents the hostility to foreign investment in some of the approaches they've taken in their opposition to the Future Made in Australia package that should not be a feature of a serious party of alternative government.

The single front door is an important initiative to make investments. Strengthening and streamlining accrued processes, aligning investment with national priorities through the investor roundtables led by the Treasurer.

Word of the National Reconstruction Fund – which you'll have seen the announcement of its first investment this morning – will also be a key part of encouraging investment in Australian capability. And of course, investments in Australian innovation – like the investment in PsiQuantum, which again has become, because of a lack of imagination and a lack of ambition for Australia from our opponents, a source of some political controversy. That investment is crucial for our future national productivity. 

I get to sit in Senate Estimates and answer questions. I was there last week and heard Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Kathy Foley, who is a well-known physicist, one of our country's top physicists. She recounted the history of Australian innovation going offshore. In the 1980s we developed solar PV, but essentially lost the industry to China.

In the 1990s we invented WiFi, but its commercialisation went to the United States. For the past 20 years, we have built a credible and world leading cluster of quantum research. We can't afford to lose this critical enabling technology to others when we are on the cusp of building a strong and world-leading quantum industry in Australia.

According to the government's National Quantum Strategy, quantum computing, communications and sensing could add $6.1 billion to Australia's GDP by 2045 and that's why we're backing the sector. Kathy recounted in her evidence to Senate Estimates the impact of that investment in Queensland and the signal of confidence that it sent to that community of researchers and investors – $179 million of additional investment since that investment was made.

38 domestic and international firms, 26 Australian research organisations producing world-leading quantum sensing, communication and computing power. If we get this right that will be a crucial part of Australia's future competitive and comparative advantage.

Of course, absolutely consistent with these, are our ambitions to deepen our economic and investment partnerships with South East Asia. I think last time I was here, we were talking about the importance of that report and redirecting Australian private investment into the South East Asia region and what difference that was designed to create in all of these areas.

The free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates over the last few months, important in trade terms, absolutely, but in investment terms, absolutely critical for investment in Australian capability. Also, in my view, a shared approach to investment across the South East Asia region. 

The Prime Minister at APEC, of course, and at the G20, is advocating for Australia's trade interests in what is a turbulent period in global trade policy and global trade diplomacy.

The scope of the challenges – and the Albanese Government's ambitions across the trade and industrial policy, and investment competitiveness areas – are all related. All are being approached by the Government with a sense of strategy and a commitment to directing Australian statecraft, including economic statecraft, to meeting these great economic security, political and investment challenges in our region.

We're absolutely determined to bring the right discipline and the right approach to these questions. That's what you see in the Future Made in Australia Act and the National Interest Framework that we're bringing to bear.

That’s our sense of discipline about our objectives and our approach to future decision-making in these areas. I have a deep sense of commitment to, as the Government does, to the outer suburbs, and our great industrial regions, and in making sure that they are front and centre in the investment opportunities and the good job opportunities in Australia's future.

Not turning inwards, not reverting to a sort of protectionist approach to these issues, but putting those communities front and centre in the opportunities for the future.

Thanks very much for the opportunity to say a few things to you today.