Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very good day indeed. Last night the Senate passed the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund legislation. This is one of the biggest ever investments in our nation's manufacturing capability and one of our key election commitments. Throughout the election campaign I made it very clear I want to see a future made in Australia. I want manufacturing jobs in Australia. I want value-adding here in Australia. Our resources sector has played such an important role for many decades, and we should continue to export our resources. But where possible we should value-add, because they're the options: export our resources, wait for the jobs to be created, wait for the value-add, then import it back at greater value—or can we do better than that? The lesson of the pandemic isn't just, 'Can we?'; it's 'We must do better than that,' because while we're at the end of global supply chains our economy is vulnerable.

This legislation will support Australian innovation and Australian industry. Australia has always been good at innovation. We've been good at research; we've been good at breakthroughs. What we haven't been good at is commercialising those opportunities in order to maximise job creation in this country. This particularly will create jobs in our outer suburbs, like in the electorate of Aston; in our regions; and throughout the entire country as well. We're backing Australian manufacturing, creating more secure work for Australians. There are seven key areas the fund will invest in: renewables and low-emission technologies; medical science; transport; value-adding in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector; value-adding in resources; defence capability; and enabling capabilities.

One of the things we know, and I'll be speaking at a conference in Western Australia on Sunday, is we have enormous benefit—just as we benefited from the resources we had in the 20th century and continue to have.

The growth in areas like lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper is quite extraordinary. We have everything that goes into a solar panel and yet we don't make enough of them here. We make very few. We have everything that goes into a battery. Already 10 per cent of the automotive vehicles around the world have a lithium battery, but that process is set to accelerate massively. The Inflation Reduction Act in the United States is a powerful piece of legislation. If we don't compete, we will see capital sucked from Australia to the United States.

We need to recognise the opportunities which are there to grow our economy and to grow jobs. Foreign investment can be one thing we harness as well to create jobs here in Australia. I met with Reliance, a major company in India, when I was there recently. They want to invest billions of dollars here in Australia, value-adding and creating jobs here in our region. There is an enormous opportunity to do so.

We need to learn the lesson that was created when those opposite were in government and they told the car industry to leave Australia, because that had a massive impact on the economy. High-value manufacturing isn't just about the direct jobs that are created. One of the things that the AUKUS project is about isn't just the direct jobs. It's the multiplier impact throughout the economy that occurs. Most of those jobs will be in our regions, our outer suburban areas and those industrial estates in Western Sydney, eastern Melbourne, around the Hunter Valley, the Illawarra, around Western Australia and around Adelaide and the hub that we will establish there to build our nuclear powered submarines in the future.

And they will be around Queensland. Just to give one example, Tritium in South-East Queensland is a company that produces the fastest electric vehicle charging station in the world. It's creating jobs in South-East Queensland. They have also set up a factory in Tennessee in the United States. I want us to make more things here. I think that is very much in Australia's interest. We need to harness that opportunity.

The National Reconstruction Fund will use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation model not only to support private sector investment to support job creation; also, importantly, it will produce a return to taxpayers just like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation does. That is why this is such important legislation.

I want to thank the crossbenchers in the House of Representatives and in the Senate for their support. They chose to participate in debate and to put forward their arguments, some of which were agreed to and some of which weren't. The ones that were consistent with the plan that we took to the election we were prepared to support as long as the integrity of what we put forward was maintained. It's beyond my comprehension why those opposite choose to be the observers of Australian politics rather than the participants, but that is what they have become with their relentless opposition to everything.

The member for New England says they are participating at the moment pretty well. They should have a bit of a look at what happened on Saturday in New South Wales to see how well their brand is going at the moment. The Liberals and the Nationals lost seats to the Labor Party.

The fact is that we will continue to put forward constructive ideas. We will continue to engage in this parliament to get things done. My government is absolutely committed to implementing the agenda that we took to the election. We received a mandate at that election, with a majority in this House of Representatives. This is very much in our national interest. I commend the bill to the House. I commend the amendments to the House as well. I conclude by congratulating my friend here, the Minister for Industry and Science, who has argued the case so strongly and so effectively for this important piece of legislation. It has been welcomed by industry and business, by unions and by those in communities who will benefit from the sort of growth that can occur.

Just to give one example of what can occur, Maryborough in Queensland was a town that was not doing as well as it had in the past. When rail manufacturing was brought back to Maryborough, through the Downer EDI site, a manufacturing hub that has operated for more than a century—I've met workers there who are part of a third generation, workers whose father and grandfather have worked on the same site in Maryborough—that town is now thriving. Through the renewables sector, particularly renewables manufacturing, they are expanding, because that one big industry has meant skills that can then be used throughout advanced manufacturing, and these skills are attracting businesses and industry to the area. That is a town that is doing so well there in Central Queensland. That can be replicated around the country.

Part of my vision for this country is cleaner, cheaper energy driving advanced manufacturing, with Australians being skilled up for those jobs. That is the future opportunity that we can take, if we have the courage, the vision and the insight to seize it. This legislation will facilitate that, and I commend it to the House.

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