Speech at Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association Conference
 

FRIDAY, 31 JANUARY 2024

 

Thank you very much. Tara.

Every time I'm introduced to one of these events, I look up at the photo and go the photo doesn't do you any favours, better do something about changing that. Here the introduction, which was delivered fantastically, but still it's the same introduction that I resolved myself that I'll fix up, but by the time I've got on the plane to go home, I've done nothing about it. It is always the same thing. But thank you very much for that introduction, Tara.

It's very good to be here with all of you in Brisbane today. Murray Watt the Workplace Relations Minister, his house, I think, is just around the corner, and he was absolutely very keen to come here and talk with you about some of the industrial relations questions, but as Tara outlined, he is at a very sad family event, and can't make it, but he passes on his best wishes to you all, and I'm sure he'll be back.

I want to join Tara by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians, the Jagera people and the Turrbal people.

You will have heard from Tara's introduction; you might have seen Steve on the television from time to time. There are some areas that, it may not surprise you to learn, of disagreement between your organisation and the government, but I do want to say a couple of things about disagreement and working together, how we disagree and how we should feel about that.

I do want to acknowledge Steve Knott, who I didn't say I was going to say some nice things about but, his, leadership of this industry group, you know, I want to congratulate him for that. And I still call the organisation AMMA, because I'm very old fashioned. For working through some challenging issues with Murray as the Workplace Relations Minister and the former Minister Tony Burke, when the truth is that what you see with Steve and AREEA is what you get.

Whether on the stump, in a mine site, in a boardroom with bureaucrats talking about policy change, or on the television, an honest and forthright approach to the challenges that face the mining and resources, and engineering sectors is welcome by the government. Tough principles focused on the interest of mining sector firms, but also with an eye on the national interest and how good public policy can make Australia and importantly, regional Australia stronger.

That's the kind of leadership that Australia needs, not just from Ministers and Prime Ministers, but from business and from unions, from community leaders and from government. What the government views as a critical juncture in Australian history, we shouldn't duck the hard arguments. We should speak frankly about the problems and subject each other to scrutiny. 

That's what Anthony Albanese wants, our national institutions and leaders pulling together in Australia's interest, because the urgency of the national challenges demands all of our attention and all of our collective effort.

We live in I think what the commentators call interesting times. It's a most consequential decade for Australia.

In a turbulent world with a regional security environment that is more contested than at any time in the last 75 years.

Where a consistent shift to a net zero global economy by our most important trading partners presents Australia with real challenges and with real opportunities.

The inflation challenges and the cost-of-living challenges and the business cost challenges that your members and your staff have dealt with since Vladimir Putin's illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. All of these questions demand collective effort, but it doesn't mean that we should duck the hard arguments.

This is the real contrast, I think, between the Albanese Government and the previous Morrison Government, and I think the Dutton Opposition, which I think would be just the same as Morrison, but with a weaker team.

See, Anthony Albanese doesn't duck the hard questions: he's focused on the interests of ordinary Australians and the interests of our country, and we want to bring Australians and Australian institutions together to build Australia's future. That means not surrounding yourself with people who always agree with you. That means being courageous about accepting difference and welcoming difference, and that is why I think the partnership with this organisation is important. We don't always have to agree to get along. We don't always have to agree to make progress, and it's important that we listen to each other, and we will continue to do that.

That's why I welcome Tara's comments at the outset. It's about the character of how we engage, and as Australians focusing on, in a pragmatic way, the interest of the people who we are representing, but also on the national interest.

I want to also acknowledge President Adam Hatcher, who's here with us this morning, too. He's president of what I'm old enough to still call the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. I find it very difficult to let that go, but President it's really good to share this morning with you.

Mining matters for Australia, and it matters for regional Australians in particular. It matters for our economic performance and in these more challenging times, for our national economic resilience, and therefore our national security, and for the security of our regional trading partners.

Australian mining is world leading. In technological and productivity terms and in terms of output, mining is a crucial Australian contribution to the global economy and to industrial supply chains. It is central to our vision of not just economic progress, but also to our vision for regional security, and of course, of our regional partners.

The problem with the domestic focus on division and conflict, on culture war nonsense and rhetoric over substance that so characterises our opponents is that beyond diminishing themselves, it makes it hard to hold more than one train of thought in your head at the same time.

Australian mining, as I've said, is crucial in economic, engineering capability, employment, environmental and national economic resilience terms.

And it's also true that Australia would be much stronger, our regional economy so much more prosperous, and that there would be hundreds of thousands more good blue collar and engineering jobs in our regions and outer suburbs, if we added value to more of our mining products here in Australia before we exported them to our trade partners.

Australian mining is at the heart of the Albanese Labor Government's Future Made in Australia plan.

Tax credits, production credits, and other forms of support for investment and innovation to make sure that the world's best manufacturers turn Australian mining products in refined metal products manufactured here in Australia's regions.

Critical minerals like nickel, cobalt and tungsten, processed into metal products here, rather than just being shipped offshore.

Bauxite transformed into alumina and Australian made aluminium – with smelters powered by our abundant renewable energy – keeping this crucial supply chain onshore here in Australia's regions.

Iron ore in Western Australia and South Australia, as well as in East Coast regional centres, turned into iron and steel products here in Australia.

A Future Made in Australia, together with the National Reconstruction Fund and other industry policy packages led by Ed Husic, and the construction of a modern low-cost reliable electricity system led by Chris Bowen, is the largest pro-manufacturing, nation building package in the history of our country.

It's ambitious, because the scale of the national challenge and the scale of the national opportunity demands an ambitious plan to build Australia's future.

It's possible for a sort of hardened old soul like me to be disappointed. I have been disappointed by how sections of our commentariat and our opponents who haven't grasped the significance of the national challenge and the scale of effort required to put Australia in the right position for our national future.

The idea that, what you infer from what New South Wales Liberal Angus Taylor says, is “people should just pull their socks up and hope to be competitive”.

This is a government that is determined to put Australian industry into a position where it is competitive, and the world's best manufacturers come here, and Queensland and Queensland mining is central to the Albanese Government's Future Made in Australia strategy.

That's why the Prime Minister announced the plan here in Brisbane last year.

Queensland mining products from for example, Mount Isa, processed into critical minerals in regional Queensland, in centres like Townsville. Bauxite from Weipa and Gove processed in Gladstone, powered by cheap wind energy from Bungaban. This keeps Bungaban, and I should say this keeps good jobs local, good regional Queensland trade and engineering jobs that build strong regional communities and opportunity for young men and women who want to have a go at a trades job in regional Australia.

Central to the plan is tax reform, production tax credits for firms that deliver local manufacturing. Payment by results – tax reduced for every kilogram or tonne produced in Queensland or across regional Australia.

Peter Dutton and his sidekick Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor call this "welfare for billionaires".

I mean, it just demonstrates that they don't get the scale of the challenge. The idea that we can secure tens of billions of dollars of investment in regional Australia without knocking into the occasional billionaire from time to time, is just nonsense. It's just a slogan. It's not serious.

They just don't get it. They don't get the scale of the challenge, or indeed of the opportunity.

There is a global competition for new manufacturing.

Zero emissions, or close to zero emissions metal products, like the aluminium that will be made in Gladstone will be produced by Rio Tinto. That's not up for debate. That is the decision that Rio Tinto has made. They have made it. I don't want to diminish their commitment to environmental principles. They are serious about those questions. They have made it primarily, though, because it's in their commercial interest to make that decision.

That's what their customers are demanding.

The only thing that is unresolved is whether Rio Tinto will continue to manufacture that green aluminium here in Australia, at Boyne Island in Gladstone, in partnership at Tomago Aluminium in the Hunter Valley and more broadly across Australia.

That's the question. Not what the fuel is going to be for their processes. It's whether they will do it here.

That is why it is such an outrage, so un-Australian, for Peter Dutton and the Liberals to announce that they would say "no" again to the Albanese Government's Future Made in Australia plan.

To cut off future manufacturing for Australia's regions and opportunities for future country kids by voting against Future Made in Australia in the Senate next week.

To threaten the viability of tens of thousands of current Aluminium jobs in Queensland, 3000 good jobs in central Queensland and Gladstone by saying that they will dump the Albanese Government's Aluminium Production Credit package.

And, most dishonestly, to put at the centre of their risky nuclear plant costings the offshoring of electricity intensive manufacturing, including aluminium processing, and then claiming that they support the industry.

It's most dishonest. It's so dishonest, it is breathtaking.

Under the Opposition's plan, released just before Christmas, when I think most Australians, minds were on sort of Myers and Grace Brothers and making sure they got Christmas presents organised in time. The modelled scenario upon which they face their future electricity use projections, which David Littleproud reasserted a couple of days ago, would be the basis for their instructions for future generation capacity construction – Australian electricity intensive industry must have between now and 2030, from 46 terawatt hours to 23 terawatt hours.

That's their plan. It's not me saying that that's in their costings in black and white. Electricity intensive manufacturing and aluminium processing as the biggest user of industrial electricity by far, cut in half to make way for Peter Dalton's risky nuclear reactor plan, which costs too much, takes too long and doesn't deliver nearly enough electricity to power our manufacturing.

Aluminium processing in Gladstone, in Tomago, in Bell Bay and Portland in Victoria can't survive Peter Dutton's nuclear power cuts. That's tens of thousands of good blue-collar jobs gone. And that matters.

That matters for the future of our manufacturing. But I would argue it matters for the future of our mining capability too. It matters for all of us.

Other electricity intensive manufacturing can't survive Dutton's nuclear power cuts, either, chemical manufacturing, refining, steelmakers just can't continue with electricity. Intensive manufacturing cut in half.

Put aside that it will push up costs for households and make industry less competitive that it deters investment in new generation capacity that is needed now, because we are relying upon an ageing, unreliable fleet of coal fired power stations that will require massive contributions to try and keep them together.

David Littleproud said the other day, "we should just continue to sweat these coal assets". He said as if that was saying in a sort of ponderous tone, made it sound more real. I mean, you would only say that if you hadn't been in one of them recently.

There's not been a single day in the last two years where there hasn't been an unplanned outage at each one of these facilities.

And of course, this badly thought-out plan cuts off future opportunity too. Australia's clean energy advantage should be to invest in good jobs and opportunities in electricity intensive manufacturing and industries in regional Queensland and regional Australia in all sorts of areas, like data centres, that will require enormous amounts of zero emissions electricity, or like regional advanced manufacturers that will transform regional Queensland.

• Gladstone's High Purity Alumina refinery Alpha HPA, which we've provided $445 million in loans and grants.
• Fortescue Future Industries' electrolyser facility also in Gladstone.
• And a $610 million loan for the Kidston pumped hydro energy storage in North Queensland.

And of course, none of this succeeds with our workers and firms working together to build Australia's future and regional Australia's future in particular.

Of course, we are a proud Labor government, proud of our record after a decade of stagnant wage growth, of lifting wages and improving work for Australian workers. Because having a job and being paid more is vital to Queenslanders staying afloat during challenging times.

After a decade of LNP economic policy which had low wages as a "deliberate desired feature" of the system, we went to the last election promising to get wages moving again.

And since then, creating more jobs and lifting wages has been a key focus for our government and for all of us, all of u, in the Labor team.

While this work will continue, I'm very pleased to see that it is making good progress. We will see new wage data released next month. This is in Murray's note, so it might be hinting that he's actually seen. I'm not sure. I certainly haven't seen it, but even without that data, Queensland is already performing above the national average for wage growth.

4.6% over the last 12 months, and I'm sure that you and your members have made a significant contribution to that achievement.

The average full time Queensland worker is now earning $195 extra per week since we're elected.

Minimum wage earners earning $24.10 per hour, compared to $20.33 when the Albanese Government took office.

These are significant achievements for ordinary working people, particularly in the regions.

We've supported pay rises for Aged Care and Early Childhood workers who do such important work here for our loved ones. A key reason why the gender wage gap has fallen to the lowest level on record in Australia.

So, because of Labor's wages policy and because of our tax cut package, Queenslanders are earning more and keeping more.

Vital higher income to deal with cost-of-living pressures. It’s good for families. It's good for economies. It's good for productivity. There are more Queenslanders in work.

Across Australia we have seen the creation of 1.1 million new jobs in a single parliamentary term, which no government in Australian history has ever achieved before.

More than half of those jobs are jobs for women whose participation in the workforce continues to rise.

In Queensland, an extra 200,600 jobs have been created since we were elected.

110,000 of those are full-time jobs with the southeast and the regions benefitting.

Creating this many jobs is an achievement in the context of a slowing economy and a labour market that is expected to soften.

It's a tribute not just to what the government has done, but what you have done, what workers have done, what we have done together as Australians.

Times are still tough for many Australians. The national challenges that I outlined at the beginning of this contribution still require hard work and determination and working together.

That's what we are committed to. To keep working with you and keep working across the entire community, to deliver for ordinary Australians, to deliver for the national interest and to deliver for Australian mining.

Thank you very much.

ENDS.