Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

():  Well, what a contribution! As usual, the Greens are grandstanding, doing their social media, overhyping their contribution to what is very important legislation. Australia is a lucky country for so many reasons. We are a smart country that can adapt. We are a country that embraces the future—we don't hide from it. We are culturally, geographically and resource rich in every sense. It is our people that are our greatest strength. Our mateship, our unity of purpose and our success as a multicultural country is the envy of the Western world.

The Albanese government is always looking to the future. We are a forward-thinking government, like all great Labor governments. We plan for the worst and hope for the best. This legislation is about locking in our future prosperity as a nation. It is about creating opportunity for all to share in the great wealth of our country. This is about this generation and the next. We know that the world is changing ever so quickly. The global economic climate has changed, and we must change with it. The planet is changing from a carbon-intense planet to a cheaper, cleaner energy producer. This is the purpose. This is the biggest change in the world that we have witnessed since before the Industrial Revolution. The global world order is shifting and if we don't shift and adapt, we will be left behind and will not prosper.

Australia is an amazing continent in the Pacific and it has been dealt an amazing hand to take every opportunity presented to it, to use our natural abilities as a nation and our natural resources, which are in abundance, to make the most of the global net zero economy. We have a unique combination of geographical and meteorological advantages, and we should be seeing all of these as advantageous and using them to make sure that we provide assets and opportunities for all Australians. That's what a good, fair government would do. It would set up Australia to take advantage of and benefit from these as a nation.

The jobs and opportunities of clean energy transition must not be taken for granted. We know those on that side, when they were in government for 10 years, had 22 policies around energy and couldn't even deliver on one—and let's talk a little bit later about their most recent lightbulb moment. On the other hand, the Albanese government want to make sure that we have manufacturing back on our land. We're about creating a future made here in Australia. That's what our agenda is. We're in a unique situation to take advantage of this and to invest in our people. That's what we are doing in our institutions and in this wonderful continent we call Australia. A future made here will power the future and bring the manufacturing base back into our own backyard. We are engaging in investment in our future.

The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 will help make Australia a renewable energy superpower and an indispensable part of the global net zero economy, to more closely align our national and our economic security interests. That's what this bill is going to do. We will modernise and strengthen our economy in a world built on cheaper and cleaner energy. This bill serves every Australian, not just some. It serves not just those in the cities, but those in our regions as well.

This bill will also ensure public investment in smart investments. It will ensure public investment that pulls in substantial private investment and guides it towards Australia's national and economic interests, like investing in green hydrogen in my home state of Tasmania, or a windfarm off the coast of Tasmania. We will educate and create the jobs of the future so every Tasmanian has a secure, well-paid job that they can rely on into the future. This bill is about a national interest framework which will help us identify sectors where we have a sustainable, comparative advantage in the net zero economy, or an economy resilient and ready to take that next secure step that we need, which is imperative going forward, and make sure that our investments are around the economy of the future, which will give us security for those people who can invest in these ventures.

Secondly, it will give us a robust sector assessment process to help us better understand and break down barriers to private investment in key areas of the economy. Thirdly, there are a set of community benefit principles that will ensure public investment and that the private investment it generates not only leads to strong returns but also leads to a stronger, healthier community.

The National Interest Framework outlines criteria to assess sectors against to ensure that we determine where Australia's national interests are so that we can unlock those opportunities to have private investment. Business must drive this investment and energy transition, and it will, because it has already started this process. We acknowledge that. Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese have made sure that the Future Made in Australia investment is the focus of our latest budget—on refining and processing critical minerals, producing renewable hydrogen, exploring production of green medals and low-carbon liquid fuels, supporting targeted manufacturing of clean energy technology, including solar, and value-adding in the battery supply chain. This is where Australia's future is heading, and we have to capitalise on it.

That's what this bill will deliver. It will deliver a better economy, it will deliver more investment and it will deliver greater outcomes for both regional Australia and our cities. It delivers a smart Australia. An Australia that continues to be reliant on foreign interests to make every single consumable is not the future that we want for Australians. We will make our own solar panels and batteries to power Australian homes and businesses, because there is nothing like Australian know-how and ingenuity. Our attitude is that we can do this and we will. We want people in this chamber to get on board and support this legislation.

The bill empowers the government to direct Treasury to undertake independent assessments, and these assessments will be tabled in parliament to supply transparency and rigorous decision-making and help deliver value for money. If we don't invest correctly, we will waste taxpayer money, and that's not what we're about.

Public investment will be an important and substantial part of our plan. Public and private investment together is what this bill is going to encourage. Private investment must be attractive to enable us to help transform our economy and our communities. This is a public and private partnership. That's what this plan is all about. The most important role for public investment will be to unlock the vast amount of private sector capital that we'll need to deploy—an additional $225 billion by 2050—to transition the energy system and realise net zero opportunities in heavy industries. The framework and the sector assessments will be instrumental here in identifying the barriers to private investment and the opportunities to address them, informed by Treasury's expert analysis and evidence based assessments on top of their own normal policy advice.

Now, we know how important it is to get expert advice when you're talking about energy, unlike those opposite. That's why they couldn't deliver on the 22 energy policies they had when they were in government for 10 years. That's why their latest light-bulb thought about energy will never be delivered—because they haven't got the backing of any experts in that area whatsoever, and the country would never, ever be able to afford it. This bill will also outline a series of community benefit principles, because we know that just pumping capital into transformation won't be enough if we don't pay attention to how we deploy it.

Our educational institutions are amongst the best in the world, which is why we have funded them—unlike those opposite, who gutted TAFE and our other institutions. Education and skills are so crucial to empower our economy and to ensure that we have manufacturing back in our backyard, but, also, educating and skilling up our people is investing in them—not like those opposite, with their record. We need to develop skills that are inclusive to ensure we have the workforces to be able to engage with local communities, including our First Nations communities and communities affected by the transition to net zero. We need to ensure our domestic industrial capabilities thrive if this plan is to be effective, so that local supply chains will be bolstered.

Our $22.7 billion budget investment demonstrates our commitment to a future made here in Australia. Public investment will show us a path to a future made in Australia, but private capital will pave the way. So it's an exciting time to be in business in Australia. It will need thinkers and entrepreneurial people to invest in Australia first, and then businesses second. The Future Made in Australia agenda is investing in a strategy to make our growth strategy stronger and to provide investors with the clarity, certainty and cooperation that they need from government.

I thank our business leaders for working so collaboratively with Treasurer Chalmers, Minister Bowen and Minister Husic, and of course the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, for his vision. He has demonstrated leadership and vision. It is a vision that supports the principles of the labour movement. It supports workers right across the country to make the best quality products right here at home in their backyard. It is time now to act. We wasted 10 years under those opposite in government. The world is changing, and, unlike those opposite, we are ready to accept the challenge of the future. The new age can be a golden age if we make the change now and decide to invest in our people and the Australian spirit.

Our country has suffered through a decade of denial and delay under those opposite, and, if they had their way, there would be another wasted decade ahead, going down a nuclear road to a mushroom cloud.

Let's not make that same mistake of the past. We must be a bold country that is a smart country—a country that knows our best days are ahead of us, not behind us. We can and we will make the best products right here for domestic and international consumption. I'm backing a future made in Australia. I'm backing the Prime Minister and his leadership. I'm hoping that those in this chamber will back Australians and will back Australia's economy to be stronger in the future and to seize the opportunity to lead, not live in the past.

We know that the Leader of the Opposition wants to take us down that nuclear road, when he has not one expert that's come out in support of it. We cannot afford to build it. We know that it's going to be decades in the making. In the meantime, they're not going to deliver any cheaper energy to households. The question is: are you supporting Australians?