Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AS () (): My question is to the Minister for Resources. How will the National Reconstruction Fund create jobs in the minerals sector, and are there any threats to these jobs?

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Swan for her excellent question. The importance of value-adding in resources is something she's well aware of. Of course, the nickel industry, which her father worked for in Kambalda, has been transformed by the world's demand for batteries—as well as all our other critical minerals that go into those batteries.

We as a government are delivering action on climate change, and we are building industries that will create good, Australian jobs. The $15 million National Reconstruction Fund will support jobs in critical minerals industries by securing the capital investment to allow those industries to grow and their workforces to grow, and for the industry as a whole to prosper. The government's $1 billion Value-Adding in Resources Fund—part of the $15 billion NRF, in case those opposite had not been aware of that—is targeted squarely at the development of the critical minerals industry. The Value-Adding in Resources Fund will bring jobs to our regions, bring manufacturing capability and processing back to our country and ensure our national security by ensuring critical minerals supply chains for Australia's benefit and, indeed, for all of those in this region.

Labor understands that Australians want us to be a country that makes more onshore, and that means backing the industries and the businesses that are making things here, and supporting manufacturing in regional Australia and also outer-metropolitan Australia.

We stand at the crossroads of an immense opportunity in relation to the global clean energy economy. The world needs our resources industry and our critical minerals to decarbonise, just as our domestic energy system will need lithium, vanadium, nickel and copper products for our own energy transition. Just like the iron ore revolution of the sixties and the LNG industry growth in recent decades, Australia's prosperity and our jobs of the future will rely on decisions taken now to support the development of our critical minerals industry.

On the few occasions that the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments had some good ideas to boost Australian jobs, such as the Critical Minerals Facility, Labor supported them in the national interest. When they announced the $1.25 billion loan to the rare earths facility in Eneabba we supported that in the national interest and in the interests of growing the critical minerals industry. But now we have an opposition that doesn't support its old decisions. Those opposite used to support the critical minerals industry. Now they're in opposition they've decided they want nothing to do with the development of critical minerals, and they demonstrate that by not supporting the Value Adding in Resources Fund.

Those opposite just demonstrate that they think they have a monopoly on good ideas. Well, that is absolutely wrong. We support the critical minerals industry in this country, and the Value Adding in Resources Fund is a critical part of that. (Time expired)