Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an issue that is incredibly important to Australia, the future of the metals-manufacturing industry in this country. In the metals-manufacturing sector, steel and aluminium play a vital part in the Australian economy, particularly in regional Australia. You only need to look to see the vital role that steel plays in a number of regional communities and economies from Newcastle to Wollongong and in Queensland. The aluminium industry provides thousands of jobs in Gladstone.

Certainly the threats to Australia's steel and aluminium industries come from a number of factors which include low international prices and a significant restructure of the industry. Certainly energy security also plays a vital role, and the federal government's lack of action on energy and particularly on gas is a gross act of negligence by the federal government. Chatting to a few CEOs around a table does not make for an energy policy that is going to deliver for workers and manufacturing in Australia.

But we must look at the role that dumping plays in the Australia and particularly in the manufacturing industry. Dumping is the practice of goods being exported to Australia below their normal worth, often with the intention of weakening your competitors. Many of the manufacturers who dump goods are from state-owned corporations and are subsidised. Statistics released by the ABS recently show that imports of Chinese aluminium to Queensland have increased from $150 million to $168.5 million in 2015-16. These figures show a concerning trend.

A report by the federal government's own Anti-Dumping Commission released in September highlighted this critical point:

The ongoing significant global over-supply has depressed steel and aluminium prices, resulting in prolonged difficult trading conditions for steel and aluminium producers generally, including in Australia.

However, the deliberate distortion of the global market by foreign manufacturers has led to a significant global oversupply of steel and aluminium. These foreign manufacturers are often state-subsidised and state-owned. This oversupply has been as a result of a deliberate intention by overseas manufacturers to weaken international competitiveness and harm Australia's steel and aluminium industry.

The OECD has expressed concern about the role of market distortions when they said 'excess capacity in one region can displace production in other regions, thus harming producers in those markets'. Furthermore, the OECD goes on to explicitly call out 'unfair trade practices such as dumping'. I am not advocating to exempt Australian steel and aluminium from global competitiveness. I am merely advocating for fair trade practices by countries who want to export their products to Australia—fair trade practices for those workers in Gladstone who just want a level playing field.

The Anti-Dumping Commission was established by the previous Labor government in 2013 to look into complaints by Australian companies against overseas companies who seek to dump products in Australia. In my home state of Queensland, we have seen thousands of Gladstone aluminium jobs vanish, in part, due to this oversupply of aluminium in the market. Gladstone has a proud history in the aluminium industry—from QAL, which turns bauxite into alumina, to Boyne Smelters, which is where the alumina is smelted into aluminium. Thousands of aluminium jobs have been lost overseas. When overseas companies dump cheap and state-subsidised products into the global market with the aim of harming international competitiveness it is Gladstone families who lose out.

My colleague Senator Carr is well attuned to the problems facing the industry and so is federal Labor leader, Bill Shorten. At the last election, we announced a comprehensive plan to secure the future for steel and aluminium. A Labor government would ensure that Australian building standards are upheld on government-funded projects, the use of locally-produced steel on federal government projects is prioritised and the anti-dumping regime currently in place has suitable enforcement and penalty options available to them. Labor will also create a national steel supplier advocate. At this critical point for the manufacturing sector, we need to ensure that the Australian government brings the industry together and that industry, unions and state governments all have a seat at the table so that we stand by this valuable industry in our country.