Acknowledgements

I begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.

I would also like to acknowledge:

• Our excellent hosts at the Geelong Manufacturing Council
• Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles MP
• Libby Coker MP, Member for Corangamite
• David Gall, CEO of the NRFC
• Emeritus Professor Roy Green, Chair of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Hub
• And all of the fantastic contributors to this Summit.

Introduction

I’m delighted to be here with all of you this morning, and to be here in Geelong as a guest of my good friend, the Member for Corio, Richard Marles.

I have the privilege of serving as Minister for Industry and Innovation, and Minister for Science, in a Labor Government whose mission is to make Australia stronger. 

Stronger, after a generation of deindustrialisation, with all its corrosive effects.

In the 1990s, when the trend toward global market integration was irresistible and trade complementarity was the prevailing mantra of global affairs, some people thought world history was finished. 

That humankind had arrived at its benevolent, technologically advanced, free-market, non-interventionist destination.

Over that time, the manufacturing share of Australia’s actual economic output declined – from 11 per cent in 1990 to below six per cent in 2020.

Productivity performance declined in parallel with that industrial retreat.

But the global shocks of this decade make clear that the post-industrial orthodoxy was built on rather shaky foundations.

During the pandemic, Australia couldn’t supply the Personal Protective Equipment, medical or electronic and information technologies we needed.

The era that we live in now, featuring trade volatility, geostrategic competition, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, all confirm again that the benign conditions of the post-Cold War world are gone.

The Future Made in Australia plan – the biggest pro-manufacturing package in Australian history – was designed to meet a world marked by these realities.

So too was the National Reconstruction Fund, a crucial investment vehicle for the making of a stronger, more resilient industrial Australia.

The current global energy and industrial supply chain shock – the worst in modern times – has made that agenda even more crucial.

That’s why the Government fast-tracked $6.15 billion in capital from the Fund, including the $1 billion Economic Resilience Program.  

That is $1 billion worth of zero-interest loans to manufacturing and logistics firms producing and transporting the fuels, plastics, fertilisers and agricultural protection chemicals that Australian businesses rely on.

It’s about leading businesses through hard times now while laying foundations for long-term industrial competitiveness and resilience.

Geelong’s journey to advanced manufacturing

Geelong – like many of the regions I visit, from Port Pirie to Whyalla, Mount Isa, Gladstone and the Hunter – highlights the challenge and promise of Australian reindustrialisation. 

This community was the Victorian epicentre of the 1990s recession.

Around Australia, we watched the Pyramid Building Society and its collapse.

We saw the decline, more recently, of manufacturing and the decimation of good jobs.

The hardship that many families around this region experienced.

The successive recoveries that, some felt, skipped over this town on their way somewhere else.

But with time and concentration of effort from state and federal governments, public sector agencies, research institutions and Australian industrial leaders, new industrial opportunity bolsters Geelong’s economy.

This is a dynamic, joined up regional economy where research and development at Deakin University, and first-rate technical education at Gordon Institute of TAFE, feed into the advanced manufacturing for which Geelong is recognised nationally.

• I think of Ford’s Proving Ground at You Yangs, where designers and developers work with expertise from Deakin University to produce prototypes of next generation Rangers and Everests.
• GT Recycling, another Geelong Manufacturing Council member, which worked with Deakin researchers to develop new recycled plastic products to replace demand for virgin plastics and implemented its flexible plastics production line backed by the national Recycling Modernisation Fund.
• Local engineering firm Austeng’s partnership with the Australian startup Viridi Innovations, Swinburne University of Technology, the Fight Food Waste CRC and Swisse Wellness has pioneered new processes that turn grape seed waste into high-value nutrients, with the prospect of lifting the competitiveness of Australia’s wine industry.

These are examples, large and small, of what Geelong achieves by pointing its scientific, technological and industrial efforts all in the right direction, mobilising collective talent in pursuit of collective aspirations.

That’s really what Future Made in Australia is about. Bringing that sense of mission and optimism and collective effort that you demonstrate here in Geelong to a national sense of purpose and mission for Australian industry.

Four pillars of a Future Made in Australia 

At the core of that agenda, are four of my areas of focus.

First, maintaining current industrial capability.

In aluminium production. Copper processing and refining. Lead and zinc smelting.

From Whyalla to Port Pirie, Hobart, Mount Isa, Gladstone and the Hunter – this government unashamedly backs Australian capability and Australian jobs.

Australia has one of the world’s only end-to-end aluminium supply chains; a series of crucial supply chains in copper processing and refining in Queensland’s northwest province; and natural advantages in low-carbon steelmaking.

Some of these industrial facilities and their supply chains hold the key to future critical minerals processing, one of Australia’s enormous natural advantages.

Trade volatility and unfair subsidies in some global markets have put acute pressures on Australian industrial producers in recent years.

Economies around the world are moving on these questions, and Australia needs to move too.

The Albanese Government’s interventions – in partnership with state governments – are supporting the modernisation, energy efficiency and resilience of these vital national assets.

For me, the premise is clear and compelling: Australia cannot afford to lose the capabilities it already has onshore.

Second, working with Minister Chris Bowen, state governments and the private sector, this Government is locking in the conditions for more low-cost energy and greater energy efficiency for Australian industry.

The $5 billion Net Zero Fund within the National Reconstruction Fund is crucial to that effort – delivering some of the world’s most competitive and patient capital to invest in clean energy manufacturing and industrial decarbonisation in hard-to-abate sectors of our economy. 

Last month, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments invested $2 billion at Boyne aluminium smelter in Central Queensland.

That joint investment provides energy security via a long-term Power Purchase Agreement for a smelter that represents 10 per cent of the state’s electricity demand.

It unlocks a further $7.5 billion investment from the facility’s owners, Rio Tinto, in new renewable energy generation and transmission projects.

It means greater energy security and efficiency for Boyne and downward pressure on energy costs for households and businesses across Queensland.

The Government’s announcement of an Australian Gas Reservation Scheme to make Australian gas available and affordable for Australians has also made a material difference.

That announcement was one of the reasons that Phosphate Hill, Australia’s last remaining producer of MAP and DAP fertilisers, chose to remain open under a new owner rather than to close – which would have occurred in March, right in the middle of a supply chain crisis.

Third, making sure Australia’s research and development system is match fit and ready to meet the moment for Australian society and industry.

As a former trade union official, I know that economic success depends on focus, alignment and an all-in approach to a shared mission. 

And what’s true at the firm or regional level is true at the national level, too.

In March, I was delighted to join Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm for the launch of the Ambitious Australia report – the culmination of a year-long review, chaired by Robyn, into Australia’s research and development system.  

Ambitious Australia is a comprehensive document, the most expansive evaluation of our research and development system in nearly two decades.  

It sets out an agenda for generational, decadal reform of the national research and development system.  

Certainly not something that can be delivered in a single Budget or a single term of Government.  

First must come alignment and focus on delivery across our whole system – making Australian scientific and industrial research more closely aligned with urgent national priorities and better harmonised with Australian needs.  

Not the abandonment of foundational research that has historically led to Australian excellence, but close partnership between governments, researchers, universities and the private sector in the national interest.

Geelong is itself proof positive that Australian research excellence can support industrial excellence – if the right missions are set and the right scale achieved.

Which leads to the fourth and final focus area – statecraft.

By that I mean strengthening institutional muscle and public sector leadership to focus government effort on areas of competitive industrial advantage.

Within government, I’ve been bringing together agencies and investment vehicles, including the National Reconstruction Fund, around our Future Made in Australia objectives.

The National Reconstruction Fund – investing in Australian firms within national priorities, crowding in private capital, and giving Australians a stake in the success of homegrown ideas and startups.

The Fund’s $75 million investment in Alpha HPA, for example, helped crowd in a further $150 million in private investment, driving the scaleup of the world’s largest High-Purity Alumina processing plant in Central Queensland.

This is how the Albanese Government is charting the course for Australian economic and industrial development.

Conclusion

This Government is building the industrial policy architecture that Australia needs for its future. 

We want to meet industrial regions and communities where they are, with the challenges and opportunities that are in front of them.

Australia faces headwinds and tailwinds all at the same time.

But we have got enormous opportunity, and you have a Government that is committed to driving that opportunity and building the nation together.

ENDS