Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Today is a very important day for Australia and for our national interests. The passage of the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024will set in place the final legislative building block in the foundations of a future made in Australia. The Albanese government is focused and determined to build a better Australian economy and stronger Australian industries and to create and protect good blue-collar jobs. The world economy is changing. Countries around the world are grappling with how to move to low- and no-emissions industries. They are playing a more active role in shoring up their manufacturing and industrial capability, and those countries are playing a greater role in attracting and creating the vital and significant investment that is needed in these new and changing times. That's because the nature and the scale of the challenge demands it, as does the nature and the scale of Australia's opportunity.

The reason that we in the Albanese government advance Future Made in Australia and, alongside it, the largest pro-manufacturing package in Australian history is grounded in our security—security for Australia in an uncertain world and in our region, which is now the subject of more contest and more competition than at any time in recent history. For Australia to be secure in strategic and economic terms Australians and Australian firms need to have more capability. Australians and Australian firms need to be able to do more things here than simply be exporters of resources and commodities. They need to make more things here in Australia to build on and back our mining and resources sectors.

The Albanese government's intention, unambiguously is to reindustrialise our regions and our outer suburbs by refining value-added Australian metals here and making more complex manufacturing products in Australia, and to include those former manufacturing strongholds in the task of building Australia's future and, in the process, delivering good jobs in new firms and factories in industrial and mining regions and suburbs across Australia. Recent events demonstrate that the world is becoming a more turbulent place where violence and trade coercion and protectionism mean that Australia's interests and our progress cannot be taken for granted. Complacency is our enemy. Does anyone sensibly think that Australia and Australians can be secure and prosper if we don't seek to reindustrialise and diversify our economy?

Our opponents—Mr Dutton's Liberals and Nationals, who will vote against this vital piece of national interest legislation—are complacent, lazy and partisan. For all their fake patriotism, when it really matters, when the security interests of Australia and the good jobs of regional and outer suburban blue-collar workers are at stake, they will as always put the Liberal and National parties' interests first and the national interest a distant second. These are the Liberals and Nationals who weakened our security interest in the Pacific and isolated Australia in the world, who cheered on the decline of Australian manufacturing in the lost decade of the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, killing tens of thousands of good Australian jobs in the process, and who now want to undermine the task of national reconstruction in the face of such an obvious national interest imperative. Just when Australia needs politicians to pull together in their interests, you will hear the same old tired, complacent, lazy and reckless lines from these entitled self-centred ideologues. You will hear deliberately misleading slogans like 'Billions for billionaires', gainsaying our national interest for utterly partisan, shallow and self-interested reasons.

Colleagues, this is a simple choice between political interest or national interest. It's a choice between good jobs and economic opportunity in the regions or rust belt decline. Peter Dutton's Liberals and Nationals have become too reckless in their complacency. They are reckless about the security questions that are central to the national interest and central to this piece of legislation. This week's intransigence over A Future Made in Australia is stock standard behaviour for a party that has lost its way. Their only message, whether it's from Senator Cash in her contribution earlier or from Mr Taylor's pronouncements about these questions, is rooted in old ideology of the past. It's basically: 'Pull your socks up and hope for the best.' That's their message for the mining and resources sector. That's their message for the manufacturing sector and for manufacturing workers. That's their message to international investors who want to bring some of the world's best manufacturing capability to Australia: 'Pull your socks up and hope for the best.'

The Albanese government in contrast is focused on backing blue-collar jobs and backing Australian manufacturing in Central Queensland, in the Hunter Valley, in the Pilbara and in Western Australia, in South Australia, in the Upper Spencer Gulf and in Whyalla, in the great industrial regions of Victoria and in northern Tasmania. Australia has a significant comparative advantage that can help us set Australia up for future decades and set up our regional and outer suburban communities for good jobs and a prosperous economic age. In wind and solar, Australia has the world's cheapest and most abundant renewable energy resources, backed by batteries and backed by gas. Australia has every critical mineral that's required and in high demand in this changing global economy—all of the critical minerals in great abundance—like lithium for batteries and the copper that's used in wires in every corner of the world. We have a world-leading mining sector, which is a critical contributor to the global economy and to global supply chains. It is a crucial employer in our regions, one that is vital for our economic and regional security. Australia has a highly skilled workforce and the world-class training institutions to make sure our people are match fit for the opportunities knocking at our door.

With our industrial capability and our business know-how, we have a long history of making great things here, be that aluminium in Gladstone and the Hunter or steel in the Illawarra. Our regional communities are well set up to benefit from this economic change. What all of those communities that I just mentioned need is a government that actually backs them, and that's what Future Made in Australia is about. Strangely enough, our opponents in the coalition love to talk the production tax credit down on the east coast, but, when they go to Western Australia, they go strangely quiet. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia knows how good support for critical minerals would be for Western Australia. In a submission to the bill's Senate inquiry, they called the introduction of this bill necessary.

This is an opportunity that will come only once this decade, a train that will leave the station only once, and it will take Australians and Australian institutions—businesses, investors, governments, unions, workers, communities, First Nations communities and regional communities—working together in the national interest, not wandering around looking for some partisan argument in every corner of the country, to set Australia up for the future. We are in a period in our history when that is what is required.

The Albanese government wants to make sure that communities are hosting new industries and that those communities that host new industries and new manufacturing benefit. That is why a key part of the Future Made in Australia agenda is the community benefit principles. It should be an uncontroversial proposition that, where firms and regions receive investment, regions and regional communities should benefit from that investment. For most Australians, that is not a controversial proposition. But, again, it's something that Peter Dutton's Liberals and Nationals are allergic to. They are allergic to good jobs, allergic to investment in the national interest and allergic to Australian achievement when they're not in government, and I think that's probably what this is all about. Where there are tough times, they're johnny-on-the-spot, but where there is a requirement for Australians to work together, they are strangely absent. You wouldn't want Peter Dutton's Liberals and Nationals to have to be relied upon in the national interest, because they are not up to it, and their intransigence and their opposition to this bill demonstrate it.

The Senate economics committee reviewed the bill and recommended that it be passed. Our Future Made in Australia agenda is all about making Australia indispensable to our partners' net zero transformations. We'll do that by attracting and enabling private investment, not replacing it. Well-targeted public investment is an important and substantial part of our plan, but it is only a small part of what is required. The Minerals Council of Australia understand that. They support the critical minerals production tax incentive, because they say it is a positive step toward attracting investment in the critical minerals industry. We'll continue to consult widely on the design of the community benefit principles to make sure that they meet the needs of regional communities for the benefit of our community.

This legislation is our chance, Australia's chance, to bring these pieces together—our productive workforce, our community needs, our investor community, our critical minerals and government support in the national interest. That's what this legislation and production tax credits are all about.

This bill does three main things. Firstly, it will establish a critical minerals tax incentive worth 10 per cent of the value of relevant mineral processing and refining costs for the production of any of Australia's 31 critical minerals. By adding more value to our critical minerals here before shipping them offshore, we have the opportunity to create tens of thousands of blue-collar jobs, strengthen our regional economies and build Australia's capability in the region.

Secondly, this bill will incentivise the production of green hydrogen—that is, hydrogen made using renewable energy. It's a key energy source to help energy-intensive sectors move away from coal and gas. The hydrogen tax incentive will be worth $2 for every kilogram of renewable hydrogen produced by eligible projects that have reached a financial investment decision before July 2030. The best thing about these incentives is that they will only be paid upon successful delivery—payment by results. It is not a free for all.

Thirdly, it will expand the role and remit of Indigenous Business Australia to help support more investment in First Nations communities. The passage of this bill sets in place the final building block in the foundations of Future Made in Australia. It is the right thing for Australia. It is the right thing for Australia's national interest. I commend the bill to the Senate.