Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. The Treasurer has said that this is a budget designed to help people while also setting Australians up for the future. We just heard from Minister Wong earlier about the important cost-of-living measures contained in the budget. Can you update the Senate on how the Albanese Labor government is setting Australians up for the future? And, Minister, how will the government's Future Made in Australia policy gear up the Australian economy to grow into the future?

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Sterle for the question and acknowledge that WA has some real opportunities under the Future Made in Australia policy. I know that people in Western Australia will be looking closely at the plans that the government has outlined in the budget. The Albanese government believes in planning for the future and creating opportunities for all Australians to benefit from the huge economic and energy transformation that the world is currently undertaking. The government's Future Made in Australia package is all about encouraging and facilitating the private sector investment required for Australia to succeed and become an indispensable part of that future global economy. A Future Made in Australia, as the Treasurer said yesterday, will maximise our geological, meteorological, geographical and geopolitical advantages, making more things here, creating secure, well-paid jobs and responding to the net zero transition that offers so many opportunities for all Australians. A Future Made in Australia will attract investment in renewable hydrogen, green metals, critical minerals, solar and batteries. It will make Australia a renewable energy superpower, it will strengthen economic resilience and security, it will back Australian innovation and science and it will invest in people and places where this transition will take place.

Our policy includes production tax credits for renewable hydrogen and processed critical minerals. It involves investment in the Australian Renewable Energy Agency that's been so successful despite the attempts to shut it down from those opposite. The Future Made in Australia innovation fund, the $1 billion Solar Sunshot and $500 million Battery Breakthrough Initiative, the quantum computing investment and a range of other reforms will accelerate approvals. We know that this country can be a renewable energy superpower—solar, wind, green hydrogen—and harness the cleaner and cheaper energy that can come from the power of a new generation of manufacturing.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, first supplementary?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Finally, Australia has a government thinking about the future. I am so rapt. As you've outlined, Future Made in Australia is a significant policy that responds to the great opportunities the energy transition presents. Can you please outline some of the ways Australians will benefit from a Future Made in Australia? Listen up.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Sterle for the supplementary. Making more things here in Australia will mean creating more secure and well-paid jobs in our suburbs and regions—something that you've spent your working life on, Senator Sterle. We've committed investments over five years to support world-class skills training and tertiary education, including financial support for apprentices, including accelerating the development of the clean energy workforce and making sure that women get an opportunity in that, including supporting the growth of the construction workforce and including our payments for the practical time that nurses, teachers, midwives and social work students spend doing prac placements.

These are all about investments in the workforce of the future that underpin and form part of the Future Made in Australia. Through that plan, the Albanese government is investing a further $1.3 billion in our people and the places at the centre of this economic transformation. We want to support the transition of workers whose skills we will need in the new industries.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, second supplementary?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm absolutely rapt. Thank you, Minister, and congratulations to yourself and the Treasurer for producing this important budget for all Australians. Can you please, Minister, outline the approach you took in putting this budget together, and why it is important that political leaders are upfront about their policies?

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Sterle. We know that Australians are doing it tough, so that's why we had a cost-of-living focus in this budget. And we know also that the country faces the biggest economic transition in history, so we have to plan for that future.

But what do we hear from those opposite? We hear them deriding the cost-of-living support and laughing at the Future Made in Australia policy. They're not coming up with plans about how to support workers or communities, unless it's about where to place a nuclear reactor, of course, which we look forward to hearing about tonight. Where are all those nuclear reactors going to go? Whose electorate are those nuclear reactors going to go in? While the pressure is on, while we're planning for a future as part of the global transition to net zero, we've got the opposition I think working on their 23rd or 24th energy policy, and they still haven't even been able to land that. They can't land it in opposition. You can't trust them with their plans on nuclear energy.