Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA Breakfast

I want to start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners, the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. 

I extend that acknowledgment to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. 

Aaron [Morey’s] account of my family's story in Australia is exactly right.  

I grew up just a few kilometres away from the grave of Silent Bob, it sits there in a cold cemetery in Glen Innes.  

I took my nieces who were travelling for school holidays down to the city to stay with me for a couple of weeks to that art gallery and pointed them to that remarkable Tom Roberts’s painting.  

They weren't as interested as I hoped.  

Growing up in Glen Innes, I was mobilised by all of those books and literature and all of that Australian history.  

I love our national history. 

Our 60,000 years of First Nations history, our post-settlement largely British colonial history, our migration stories through the 20th and the 19th centuries. 

These are not forces that have acted upon Australia in some invisible kind of way.  

We, all of us, First Nations Australians, our colonial history, our migration story, our great story of multiculturalism and immigration.  
We made us.  

We made us, all of us together, and that is something that no country on earth, really, can match in terms of its own history.  

It's a history that I am immensely proud of.  

I want to acknowledge colleagues who are here today people here today. Mr. Elton Swarts, Executive Chairman, Business News, Mr. Charles Kobelke, CEO, Business News, Mr. Aaron Morey, Chief Executive, CMEWA, that was, possibly my most confronting introduction.  

Mr. Dino Otranto, Chief Executive of Fortescue Metals and Operations, Fortescue Mr. Laurent Trost, Chief Operating Officer, Yara Pilbara and Mr. Chris Page, General Manager NeoSmelt and Future Technologies, Bluescope. 

I am just so delighted to be here in the West to talk about Australian metals manufacturing and why it really matters for Australia in strategic and economic terms, and the job in front of all of us. 

From ore to opportunity 

Business News and the CMEWA have called today’s event “From Ore to Opportunity”. 

Iron ore has long been Western Australia’s and Australia’s opportunity. 

The Albanese Government is focused on capturing opportunity’s next phase as global trade and customers and economies shift. 

To protect our resources sector and position Australia for future industrial investment and leadership. 

Ninety-nine per cent of Australia’s iron ore is produced right here in WA. 

Last year, iron ore exports were worth around $116 billion – our most valuable commodity export. 

Workers and industry are entitled to feel proud of that contribution to Australia. 

I know many of you are watching the collective bargaining effort in the Pilbara. 

While it’s for the participants to sort out, the Albanese Government wants to see cooperative industrial relations – workers, unions and firms working together to lift productivity and create good jobs. 

But I’ll make the point that trade unions are crucial democratic institutions.  

They are foundational to our national story, foundational to modern Australian democracy, society and national identity.  

The participants in that dispute will work this out – in my experience in Australian industrial relations – 25 years before I was elected – these things are always going to be resolved. 

Collective bargaining has grown in Australia. That's good for business. It's good for workers. It's good for our democracy too. 

Future Made in Australia is about adding value to and protecting the wealth generated from our commodities – in the face of fierce competition for control over supply chains – and to shape a stronger Australia with a more resilient economy. 

Global markets for some metals are not level playing fields.  

Industrial subsidies and non-market interventions in major industrial economies have contributed to distorted prices and persistent oversupply – and left Australia exposed to the excesses of these policies.  

The risks are compounding with changes in our number one market. 

China’s domestic demand is reducing due to a property sector slowdown and their moves to decarbonise steelmaking, using higher-grade ore than Pilbara ore. 

All these factors put pressure on producers around the world, but especially here in Western Australia.  

These are resilience risks for our economy and strategic position that we must not ignore. 

While we are working with international partners to enforce trade rules and balance global markets – we must face the reality that we cannot control every decision made offshore.  

But we can decide how we respond here at home.  

Our task is to protect the value of our resources.  

To move further up the value chain and build the low-emissions metals capability the world is going to need.  

Combine those ore and energy resources here at home. 

Make low-emissions iron in the Pilbara. 

Or on the East Coast, use bauxite, wind and solar to produce low-emissions aluminium in giant quantities for Australia and the world. 

That’s the Australian opportunity. 

That’s the future competitive advantage. 

The world’s economies are racing to reduce their emissions – and new markets for low-emission iron, steel and metals are emerging. 

Accenture estimated that low-emissions iron could generate for Australia upwards of $122 billion per year in export revenues by 2040. 

Building this industry will help us boost domestic manufacturing and metals processing, creating better jobs for Australians in our regions and outer suburbs. 

And through reliable trade, we can help our partners hedge against global uncertainty. 

Japan and the Republic of Korea are looking to us for low-emissions iron. 

Our task, my task, is to drive the investment, facilitate the development and use Australian science to deliver it here in Australia. 

I was so pleased to see on Wednesday Alcoa’s Wagerup alumina refinery reach Final Investment Decision. 

This will strengthen critical mineral supply chains in partnership with Japan and the United States, produce about 10 per cent of the world’s gallium and lock in decades of future jobs and investment. 

This project is a priority under the United States-Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, signed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Donald Trump last year – in a meeting that your local hero, Minister King, the Minister for Resources, and I attended as well. 

This will also strengthen our own economic resilience. 

Steelmaking and metals smelting use huge amounts of energy.  

Not something I need to explain to this group, but we do need to talk about these issues to Australians in practical ways to build national understanding and build national commitment. 

Using renewable energy is also about shielding Australia and our partners from significant energy shocks. 

Iran might be able to close the Strait of Hormuz, and force up global energy prices, but they can’t stop the Australian sun powering low-cost solar power at industrial scale. 

Russia might engage in an illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine forcing up gas prices, but they can’t stop Australian wind powering Australian wind turbines. 

The Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme is the Albanese Government’s landmark Labor reform and core to establishing Australian energy security and competitiveness. 

From next year, reserving 20% of export gas volume for Australian industry and households.  

Additional gas delivering security of supply and competitive prices for all of Australia – just as it has here in Western Australia – enabling big new energy intensive industrial investments to secure long term competitive contracts.  

Particularly here in Western Australia, where future investments will require an enormous amount of additional energy from gas and electricity. 

The consultation process has closed – and we are carefully attending to the views of industry and producers. 

We are determined to deliver a durable and decisive intervention that secures more gas, pushes down prices to secure Australia’s industrial advantage and competitiveness, and meets future demand. 

The Albanese Government’s approach 

The world is rapidly changing. 

An accelerated pace of global change and shocks. 

From Covid-19 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the shifting balance of regional economic power, the current conflict in the Middle East and the diffusion of AI through society. 

It may feel as we are just a small boat tossed about in stormy seas. 

As a government, our job is to manage and lead. 

The conflict in the Middle East has had significant impact on the world’s fuel and energy reserves. 

The Albanese Government has calmly and pragmatically worked with international and industry partners to secure the fuel, diesel, jet fuel and fertiliser Australia needs. 

We have more fuel now in Australia than we had at the beginning of the crisis. 

Because unlike the Coalition and One Nation we didn’t run around scaring people, plundering their fear and turning it into political opportunity.  

We just got on with the job – one shipload at a time. 

For all of their partisanship, all of their bellowing hyperbolic negativity – can you imagine the response of an alternative government with Senator Hanson, or Matt Canavan or Angus Taylor?  

Calling regional leaders in South East Asia or China to secure diesel, or jet fuel or fertiliser so essential to our industry, agriculture and economy?  

They are so lost in the bankrupt, imported right-wing ideology conflict that they can’t see the Australian interest. 

The turmoil in the Middle East is a stark reminder of the urgency of the task at hand – to make the best use of our renewable energy resources, to build domestic industrial capability, and to reduce dependence on global supply chains where it makes sense to do so. 

That’s my focus as Industry and Science Minister. 

Australian resources, Australian energy, Australian capability to produce new industry for Australia and our export partners. 

We’re investing over $5 billion dollars to support Australia’s metal industries take hold of this opportunity. 
   

• The $1 billion Green Iron Investment Fund to establish commercial-scale new low-emissions iron facilities, the foundations of this new industry. 
• The intervention at the Whyalla Steelworks, to see it purchased by a new owner who will invest in low-emissions steelmaking and protect our Australian capability.
• $2 billion with the Queensland Government to help Boyne Aluminium Smelter move to renewable energy, with Rio Tinto underwriting another $7.5 billion of new renewable generation and transmission. This will make it among the world’s first aluminium smelters underpinned by solar and wind power. And together with the government of New South Wales, delivering that outcome for Tomago Aluminium too.  
• The Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund, which opened in December, with $750 million for green metals, to support pilot and demonstration projects over the next decade. 
• Funding for the Green Metals Innovation Network, led by CSIRO in partnership with the Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre, to bring together researchers, industry and international partners to accelerate new metals technologies. 

Future Made in Australia is also about providing the right investment and conditions to attract and catalyse private investment. 

That’s why we are making it easier for companies to invest in Australia and deliver major projects through the Investor Front Door. 

The Front Door is moving into my portfolio, bringing together key project facilitation capabilities for maximum impact. 

Making it easier for businesses to engage with government. 

And giving government the coordination tools to shape future national interest investments in resources to metals, defence, critical technologies and other resilience capabilities. 

To build a stronger and safer Australia. 

The global conditions impacting metals manufacturing have been a constant focus of my first year in the portfolio. 

From Mount Isa to Gladstone, Whyalla, Port Pirie, the Hunter and Tasmania – these smelting facilities are under real pressure. 

We have intervened where we must – protecting 30,000 jobs across these facilities and their interconnected supply chains. 

I am deeply disappointed with yesterday's announcement of the proposed closure of the Liberty Bell Bay. 

We’ve worked closely with the Tasmanian Government and Jeremey Rockliff, the Premier of Tasmania to defend that facility.  

All of the efforts to secure these industrial facilities require a shared and equal commitment with state governments.  

We worked very hard with Tasmania on those questions.  

But it also requires partnership with the firms that have the responsibility of managing these facilities. 

Liberty Bay Bell underscores the stewardship role that managers and owners have in delivering the careful capital investment and maintenance so crucial to the ongoing viability of their industry.   

That clearly did not happen with Liberty's ownership of the Georgetown Manganese facility, and that has been decisive.  

We have got an enormous job in front of us. 

Stabilising our current industrial capability. 

Building new iron industries. 

Building low-emission steelmaking capability. 

Building world-leading renewable aluminium exports. 

Investing in the science and the technology, and the capability of Australians in our national interest to build a more resilient, stronger, and safer economy.  

And I know that you are all going to be powerful partners in that process.  

Thank you very much.