Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is really exciting. This bill is about the future. It's about a bright future for Australia, for Australians, for Australian businesses, for Australian industry and for the Australian economy. This is about our future prosperity as a nation—a prosperous future for all Australians. It's about our future role in the world, a world that is transitioning to new energy and new opportunities. We can either bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening or see it for what it is.

The worldwide transition to net zero is a challenge, but it's also an enormous opportunity, particularly for a country like Australia, with our natural advantages: mineral deposits and abundant renewable resources—solar, wind and hydro. This bill is all about realising our genuine advantages and recognising that our future growth prospects lie at the intersection of our industrial, resources, skills and energy bases and our attractiveness as an investment destination so we can grasp the jobs and opportunities of the clean energy transition. It's about attracting private-sector investment to maximise the benefit to this country—well-paid, secure jobs, secure supply chains, and a secure role in the global net-zero economy. It's about addressing some of the challenges facing our island nation in a changing global and strategic landscape, such as sovereign capability and supply chain security.

In South Australia, Premier Peter Malinauskas and the state Labor government are running a series of state prosperity forums. I recently attended one of these very well attended forums. The inspiring message being presented is how worldwide decarbonising is an opportunity for South Australia and how the South Australian government can position the state to be ready for this. The projects include the Northern Water project, which will deliver desalinised water to Olympic Dam and surrounds to facilitate copper mining without draining the artesian basin; and green hydrogen produced using excess solar and wind generated electricity, which South Australia already has in abundance and which can be used to make green iron and steel. Copper, iron and steel are all vital resources for electrification all around the world, and South Australia plans to capitalise on our natural assets to deliver prosperity to South Australians, in the form of well-paid, secure jobs, and prosperity for the state, in the form of value added product: green iron, steel and copper processed in South Australia. This is a great plan for South Australia. It's a great plan for environmentalists and those who are really concerned about climate change action and decarbonising. It is building industries that will contribute to the state's decarbonising but also to the world's energy transition. And it's great for business and industry because it's taking advantage of market opportunity and using our natural advantages to build big profitable businesses.

The world is changing, and the pace of that change is accelerating as the planet moves to a future powered by cheaper and cleaner energy. As the Prime Minister has said, this change means we are in the middle of the biggest transformation in the global economy since the Industrial Revolution, and we can either ride the wave of change and benefit from it or pretend it isn't happening and get dumped by it instead. It appears those opposite would prefer to ignore opportunity when it comes knocking—ignore economic opportunity. South Australia is certainly prepared to ride the wave of change and make sure we benefit from it, and this bill is a major step in implementing the Albanese Labor government's Future Made in Australia agenda to deliver our country's next generation of prosperity.

The world is changing, and Australia needs to change with it and position ourselves to take advantage of these changes. If we don't, the country will be poorer and more vulnerable. We'll be more dependent on overseas supply chains, with profits flowing offshore to countries that have better prepared themselves. It will make us vulnerable to geopolitical instability, and this is not the future we want for this country.

We have a unique combination of geological, meteorological, geographical and geopolitical comparative advantages, and we know it would be an egregious breach of our responsibilities as a government if we didn't play this winning hand. This bill is all about realising our genuine advantages and recognising that our future growth prospects lie with our industrial, resources, skills and energy bases. This makes us an attractive investment target so we can build industries, create well-paid, secure jobs and harness the opportunities of the clean energy transition.

Our goal here is to power the future. Our strategy is to engage and invest, to attract private investment, to prosper from change. This bill brings us closer to the prosperous future for all Australians that we know is there for the taking. And it helps us secure Australia's place in the shifting global economic and strategic landscape on the back of the global transition to net zero. We want Australia to be a place that makes things, as it did in the past.

Every year, Harvard researchers do an assessment of the economic complexity of 133 major economies around the world. Economic complexity is basically a measure of the value-added contained in a country's exports—how much of our export income comes from products that require knowledge. For instance, digging up iron ore and exporting it requires relatively less knowledge input than also processing it into steel and then into a car, to use a simplistic example. Higher complexity is also a measure of the economic potential of a country. Economic complexity not only correlates with GDP per capita; it also predicts future economic growth. Of the 133 countries measured by the Harvard researchers, Australia rates 93rd. We sit just below Uganda and just above Pakistan—this despite having a GDP per capita that is 68 times larger than Uganda's and 40 times larger than Pakistan's.

In the last decade alone, under those opposite, Australia has fallen 12 places in economic complexity. The Atlas of Economic Complexity notes that Australia's worsening complexity has been driven by a lack of diversification in exports. Our economy is less complex than would be expected, given that our GDP per capita is the 12th highest in the world. Given the lack of complexity in our current export products, doing more of the same is unlikely to change anything. We need instead to look at the world around us, at the current trajectory and future needs, and strategically move into areas that we know will grow. We need to start making things in Australia again. And instead of fighting an uphill battle on products that other countries are already experts in, we need to use our competitive advantages to get ahead of the market in the new decarbonised world economy: green energy, green steel, green aluminium—energy transition products.

I know my electorate of Boothby is ready for this. Already we have the internationally recognised Tonsley Innovation District, home to over 150 high-tech modern manufacturing businesses. The entire district runs completely on solar and wind power generated on site. It's also home to the largest hydrogen electrolyser in the Southern Hemisphere, where excess solar and wind energy is stored as hydrogen that is exported to Whyalla every week. And this government is investing in the Factory of the Future at Tonsley, and the South Australian Labor government is putting in a technical college at the same site, in addition to the existing TAFE campus and the campus of Flinders University. We know the future is bright for these industries, and they will be needing more skilled workers. Exposure to these industries during training is a fantastic opportunity for students to get a head start and for businesses to identify the workers they need to employ so they can grow their businesses. That's what this bill is about.

The legislation has three pillars. The first is a national interest framework. This will identify sectors where we have a sustained comparative advantage in the new net zero economy, or an economic resilience and security imperative to invest. The national interest framework outlines criteria to assess sectors to determine where it is in Australia's national interest to unlock private investment at scale. It looks at economic security and resilience, considering where domestic sovereign capability is necessary to protect our national security interests or to ensure that our economy is sufficiently resilient to shocks. It also focuses on net zero transformation, where industries support global decarbonisation and there is a reasonable prospect of sustained comparative advantage.

The second pillar is a robust sector assessment process to help us better understand and break down barriers to private investment in key areas of the economy. This transparent, Treasury-led analysis will look at the extent that sectors align with the National Interest Framework, and these assessments will be tabled in parliament to support transparency and rigorous decision-making and to help deliver value for money. Public investment will be an important and substantial part of our plan, unlike the plan of those opposite, who were unable to attract private investment interest in their eye-wateringly expensive, far-fetched nuclear plan.

The most important role for public investment will be to unlock the vast amount of private sector capital that we will need to transition the energy system and realise the net zero opportunity in heavy industries. The framework and the sector assessments will be instrumental here, identifying the barriers to private investment and opportunities to address those barriers, informed by Treasury's expert analysis and evidence-based assessments—on top of their normal policy advice—and helping private investors to make considered decisions, confident that they know where the government stands.

The third pillar is a set of community benefit principles that will ensure that public investment and the private investment it generates leads to returns and also to stronger communities. The three pillars will work together to help us build a more diversified and a more resilient economy, powered by renewable energy.

This Future Made in Australia Bill is about protecting the interests of this country through stronger domestic industrial capabilities, sovereign capability and stronger local supply chains. It's about developing a more complex economic offering in line with our capability and know-how and about taking advantage of our natural assets—abundant renewable resources, solar, wind, hydro and critical mineral deposits. As always with this government, this is also about generating good-quality, secure, well-paid jobs and careers for Australians. I commend the bill to the House.

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