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

I would have thought the heckling wasn't necessary; I would have thought there was bipartisan agreement on that issue.

President Biden and I have signed a historic agreement to advance climate and clean energy action between our countries. We agreed that climate change action is a national security issue. He, indeed, stated on Saturday that this is a new pillar of our alliance—a new, third pillar, indeed. The Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact is an ambitious agreement. It will expand and diversify our clean energy supply. It will promote the sustainable supply and processing of critical minerals and support the development of clean hydrogen, battery technologies and other clean energy products.

President Biden also undertook to work with congress to enable Australia to be included as a domestic supplier under the US Defense Production Act. Now, that is critical, because treating Australia as a domestic supplier will allow our industries to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act. That is worth A$547 billion dollars. That means big opportunities for Australia to build our renewable energy industry and create jobs, including in the hydrogen sector, to boost manufacturing to support emerging industries. The only other country in the world with this designation is Canada.

So we'll do this while ensuring our people and businesses can access secure, affordable, renewable energy. What this shows is that the Australia-US alliance continues to go from strength to strength. I look forward to visiting the United States later this year. Of course, President Biden, like other US leaders, will always be a welcome visitor here in Australia. But I thank him very much for the relationship that we have built over the last year. It is in Australia's national interest that we develop those strong personal relationships at a leadership level, and that is something that we have been doing. President Biden is a great friend of Australia, and I welcome the initiatives that arose on Saturday from our bilateral and then from the Quad meeting, which we had later that day.

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