Well, what a fantastic crowd. Thanks, Tracey. It is true that I think there’s so many of the manufacturing and tech sector events are hosted by Tracey not just because she’s an amazing MC but also because of her deep interest in this area of economic policy. So I’m really grateful to be sharing the stage with her. 

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today – the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. 

What an extraordinary rendition of the national anthem. I was with it all of the way. I’m not convinced that I really held the final note. I know some of you did. I could not. I could not. I gave it a red hot go. 

I want to acknowledge a few people: Scott Filby, who’s the owner and publisher of Industry Update. It makes an enormous contribution for manufacturing firms, for people interested in manufacturing policy to have somebody who’s prepared to put their heart and soul into publishing the journal, engaging with the industry, advocating for the industry, lifting the profile. So it’s a really important contribution to the country, Scott, so thank you very much for that. 

Amber Stanley, who’s the Executive Director for Industry Investment NSW, who’s standing in for a couple of the ministers from New South Wales who would have been here but I understand the state parliament is in progress at the moment. In Club Fed, you know, we look at the state parliament, we know how important their work is. But, anyway, I’ll leave my New South Wales government jokes to another forum probably. Get in less trouble. 

Matt Kelly from St George Bank, great to see you and your support for this organisation. 

My old friend Roy Green is here. There’s nobody really in Australian academic and research and public policy life who’s made more of a contribution to elevating the role of industrial policy, of government engagement in this area, such an important area of economic activity than Roy. So it’s very good to see Roy here tonight. Many of you will have engaged with him over the years.

I want to acknowledge all of the finalists tonight. It’s a pretty exciting program. 

You know, all of my working life I’ve been in and around the manufacturing sector as a trade union official in my previous life, advocating not just for manufacturing workers in a collective bargaining sense but advocating for the sector with government, with the regulators, fighting for the manufacturing sector for all of that time, and then given the opportunity in the Australian Parliament to take that argument to parliament, and then being appointed just a few months ago as the Minister for Industry. It is really the opportunity of a lifetime. And I can tell you that, you know, I love the sector. I appreciate more than many, I think, in public life who it is that does the work in the sector – you know, the apprentices, the workers, the supervisors, the people who run firms, the ownership, the investors. 

We are a remarkable community of Australians who are committed to achieving something for the country, making things using our skills, using our plant and machinery and our technology, using our management capability, using our investments to make Australia a better place, to strengthen our economy and to make Australia a more economically resilient country for the future. 

And it has been, I think, a pretty tough 20 or 30 years in the manufacturing sector. For those of us who know – you know, I grew up in the bush. My first work in this area was in, you know, country manufacturing. And you just know how hard those people work, how every opportunity to transform within the financial investments limits, within the skills limits to transform our firms to become more productive, to find every opportunity to produce more and to produce at higher quality, it sort of goes in the face of what has been going on in the economy, but also a tendency, I think, to talk the manufacturing industry down. 

I’ve always resisted that. I’ve always resisted that. And at this juncture in our history it is a pretty important time for Australia and the role of the manufacturing sector is going to be so important to us meeting all of those big national challenges. This is not a time for complacency about Australia’s place in the world and our capacity to meet some of those big national challenges. Our geopolitical situation is tougher than it has ever been. Really in the last half of the last century and the first 25 years of this century we face a more uncertain geopolitical environment, and our region is the theatre for more competition and more uncertainty. 

We face challenges in terms of economic resilience, demonstrated, of course, by the trade volatility at the moment, the imposition of tariffs on our economy and many economies around the world, subsidies in some economies that make competition for Australian firms and a level playing field for Australian firms very hard to achieve. The climate and energy challenges. 

When you go through the challenges that we face you have to reach a couple of conclusions. Firstly, that manufacturing and industrial capability are going to be central to Australia and Australians being able to make our way through the next few decades. And that means that we have to have a focus on what it is as a government that we can contribute to building our industrial capability to be able to meet those challenges. 

And, of course, secondly, you reach the conclusion that the reduction in industrial capability has made our capacity to meet some of those challenges harder. There’s been a lot of discussion this year about productivity in the Australian economy. And, you know, you look at Roy’s work and some of his colleagues’ work, it’s pretty straightforward really from my perspective. You can follow the graphs as manufacturing intensity has declined, as Australia’s economic complexity, particularly our export complexity, has declined. Our research and development intensity, particularly private sector investment in research and development intensity, that has declined too. It’s traditionally been our large manufacturers who have invested the most in research and development capability for the Australian economy. And productivity has declined at the same time. 

But that is the scale of the national challenge that we find ourselves in, so it is a consequential time where geopolitical challenges, the energy and climate challenges, all of the other challenges that it is that Australia faces in part require an industrial answer, a technology answer, a capacity to make things and to solve problems in the national interest. 

So it is a consequential decade for Australian industry, and I can tell you that while there’s a little part of me that’s like a little boy so excited about the opportunity to serve as Australia’s Minister for Industry, mostly I feel the sense of responsibility very acutely indeed. We – all of us in this room; it’s not just a challenge for government, it is a challenge for all of us in this room, there is a lot of work to do. And not without risk. Not all of its straightforward, not all progress will be linear. There will be failures as well as successes, but we have got an enormous job to do in the national interest. 

And that is why when the Albanese government was elected in 2022 and in the period since we have brought to bear the biggest pro-manufacturing package in Australian history. Future Made in Australia, production credits, tax incentives, all of the other measures, $22.7 billion; the National Reconstruction Fund, $15 billion; the Strategic Examination of Research and Development. I met with Robyn Denholm, who is an eminent Australian chairing that program of making sure that our research and development system is fit for purpose and is as impactful as it can be bringing all of our smartest researchers, public sector and private sector capability together to commercialise Australian IP manufactured onshore, led by Robyn Denholm, eminent Australian with a lot of experience in the tech sector in particular. The chair of Tesla, I met with her this afternoon. They will deliver their findings to government in just a few months’ time. 

Our approach in supporting industry in the challenge to meet more efficient capability, particularly electrifying industry – $5 billion in that Net Zero Fund – these are large contributions. But what they require, of course, is people to commit, to co‑invest. This is a kind of approach that is not about grants, although they are very important; it’s about co-investment. About us crowding in private sector investment in the Australian manufacturing capability. So we’ve got big things to do. 

As was indicated at the outset, I’ve just returned from a trip supporting the Prime Minister’s meeting with the President of the United States and the leadership of the administration’s cabinet. It was an extraordinary couple of days, I can tell you, in Washington. It reaffirms what it was that I’ve been trying to say to you earlier in this contribution that in the bilateral relationship with the United States and with some of our other partners, manufacturing and industrial capability are central to the future of the relationship. 

The core outcome of that discussion in the cabinet room and then in the Oval Office – places where I never thought I’d find myself, I have to tell you – was a deal on critical minerals between Australia and the United States that puts our capabilities, not just in resources terms – the Prime Minister is fond of saying we basically have the whole periodic table underneath the ground. We have the world’s best wind and solar resources. We are close to the fastest growing markets of the world in human history. 

The Future Made in Australia program is all about making sure not just that we’re exporting lithium ore around the world but we’re exporting metal, processed metal, processed here in Australia. Australian ores turned into Australian metals and into Australian metal products. And that agreement that we reached with the United States is something that’s been sought by successive Australian governments. It is a very important agreement indeed for our future –

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– was the fact that the private sector came too, as part of that process and invested, co‑investments from the Australian government, from the government of the United States and in one case trilateral investments from Australia, the United States and Japan in gallium production, this time in Western Australia, secures onshore Australian critical minerals production, mining and production, here led by government but in partnership with the private sector, multinationals driving investment in regional communities that will deliver benefits in the supply chain, make Australia more economically resilient, build our industrial capabilities. 

It is an $8.5 billion pipeline of investment, and that is just the start. And it is not mission accomplished in any sense on these questions. As I said in my contribution earlier, there is a lot of work to do, but we are determined to be purposeful, to be deliberate, to deliver with impact our strategy to rebuild Australian manufacturing capability in partnership with you. 

I met yesterday with Mike Kratsios in the US administration to talk about doing the same work in a partnership sense on artificial intelligence and tech to deepen Australia’s capability in that area. Again, not mission accomplished, but so much – so much – work to do. This is a government that means what it says when it says it’s about a partnership with the private sector. And we know that we will not get everything right, but we are determined to work with you shoulder to shoulder, learn the lessons as we go along, deliver with impact for the communities that we care about, particularly in outer suburbs and the big industrial regions, and to rebuild our manufacturing capability and to make Australia stronger and more economically resilient as a result. 

I’m delighted we’ve had the opportunity to speak with you tonight. I did just get off the plane from Washington, so I may not stay for the whole do, but I really wish all of the finalists the very best. 

Congratulations for the winners, and, as Scott said, keep coming back.