Japan Update conference keynote speech

Well Vice Chancellor, thank you very much and I want to join with previous speakers in acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land that we meet upon today, the Ngunnawal people, and extend that acknowledgment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today.

Also of course, I do would want to acknowledge His Excellency Kazuhiro Suzuki, Japan’s Ambassador to Australia who has played such an important role in the contemporary Australia–Japan relationship.

Vice-Chancellor thank you for that introduction.

Professor Armstrong, other dignitaries and VIPs.

I do want to thank Professor Janine O'Flynn and the team at the Crawford School of Public Policy for putting on this year's Japan Update conference.

This program, the Japan Update program and the East Asia Forum Quarterly, that is a significant contribution that the Australian National University makes to how Australia understands Japan, it brings rigorous scholarship into the public debate and helps sustain the exchange of ideas to make this relationship more vital, have more heart, and more capacity to grow.

For those of you visiting here from Japan, welcome to Canberra – our Bush Capital. It is a very good time to be in Canberra, it is not quite as cold. The flowers are actually fantastic.

Sometimes Parliament House can be a pretty grim you know place to be as a visiting senator from New South Wales. It is a beautiful place if you have an opportunity to get up to the Parliament.

Of course, as an Industry Minister, Minister for Science I do want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the Japan–Australia industrial, energy and technology relationship, and its potential to evolve and deepen – To be a source of economic growth, to improve national resilience, add to both of our security but also the security of the region in which we live, and make us stronger.

50 years of partnership

It turns out that after our period in recess industrial policy is suddenly at the heart of international relations of countries economic growth strategies and our approaches to security and resilience and to supply chains.

I actually re-read the text of the Nara Treaty, the Basic Treaty, over the course of the weekend and reflected on the words that were in the Treaty.

Prime Minister Takaichi was here earlier in the year. She visited the Nara Park – she feels a sense of attachment to the Treaty, not just because it was valued, but because her electorate is in Nara – and reflected on that moment 50 years ago.

Prime Ministers Fraser and Takeo Miki signed the agreement, but its genesis went back much further.

It was Whitlam who, on the Australian side, approved the commencement of negotiations.

But it's fair to say that it was John Crawford, and if I’m being pompous Sir John Grenville Crawford, in fact, for whom the ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy is named – he can take much of the credit for the early leadership that was required to build momentum for the Treaty.

And while so much has changed in our two countries and in our region since the signing of the Treaty – we live in a future unimaginable to its authors – the Treaty and the relationship have really stood the test of time.

I am just a few years older than the Treaty – just a few, I heard a giggle up the back, I’m watching you – I have watched Australia change and I have watched Japan change, and I have watched our relationship change. And I have watched the importance of the economic, and the energy, the security and the industrial relationship deepen and evolve.

As a young trade union official in Australian manufacturing, it was very clear to me then that Australia had everything to gain from Japanese firms' investment and involvement in Australian industry.

It was hard to find an innovative and successful Australian industrial firm who hadn't benefitted from Toyota Australia's introduction of Lean Principles.

“Kaizen,” “Muda, Muri, Mura” and “Genchi Genbutsu” – mispronounced almost single every time by Australian manufacturing workers – were invaluable additions to Australian management, Australian industry and innovation.

Investment in mining, manufactured products and energy brought not just vital jobs and opportunity – they enriched the fabric of Australian productivity and Australian industrial innovation.

The closure of Toyota's last Australian car maker was a sad day for all of us.

Thousands of outer suburban and regional jobs gone, leaving Australia less productive, less exposed to global innovation, research and development, and less resilient – another Tony Abbott public policy disaster, if I may say.

Benefit flows back to Japan too.

Australian coal, and Australian LNG, have delivered for Japan's industry and Japan’s energy security.

For decades, Japanese manufacturing firms have relied on Australian iron ore, aluminium, copper, and nickel.

The Treaty provided the framework, but generations of thoughtful public and private sector leadership and action, investment and cooperation have been of immense benefit to both countries.

Sharpening our comparative advantages to make us stronger through a rapidly changing world characterised by tumult, change and shocks which come more rapidly than ever before.

Industrial policy shaping long-term resilience in a rapidly changing world

Which brings me of course to 2026 – A year of intensified focus on energy security, global supply chain uncertainty and seismic technology shifts.

During this war in the Middle East, Australia and Japan have cooperated closely – bilaterally and together with partners – to deliver and deepen our mutual interdependence in the interest of our peoples, our industries and our region.

Unimaginable in March of this year – with our political opponents calling for fuel rationing and driving panic – it is unimaginable isn’t it that there would be more fuel in Australia today than before the crisis began.

And rather than turning inward, the Takaichi Government saw an opportunity to increase regional energy security, pledging $10 billion USD to support our ASEAN neighbours as they fought to secure oil and petroleum supplies.

But I just want to make the point though the energy and industrial complementarities of today should strengthen and shape our approach that will deliver resilience, security and growth for the 2030s and 2040s.

This is really at the heart of both Japan’s and Australia’s industrial policy agenda.

For Australia, that’s Future Made in Australia – the largest pro-manufacturing package of any Australian Government to date.

Driving Australia’s future competitive advantages in renewable energy, geography – both in land scale and proximity to growing Asian markets – stable governance, strengthening supply chains, moving up the value chain and reindustrialising the country.

Focusing on areas where we can increase Australian energy security – like clean energy manufacturing and critical minerals and metals processing.

And bringing together industry, investors, science and research community in a more coordinated and more focused effort.

Driving investment in our regions and outer suburbs through the Investor Front Door and the National Reconstruction Fund, against clear national priorities scoped out and coordinated by the new National Resilience and Science Council.

Reindustrialising Australia will be underpinned by a domestic gas reservation delivering more affordable gas for Australia while recognising Australia’s responsibility to be a reliable partner in the region not least to our partners in Japan.

Energy security is an enduring partnership between our two nations, strengthening economic resilience in both countries – and as a Government we feel that responsibility to our core.

Japan’s ambition to revitalise its own vast, complex and capable industrial and energy sector is just as ambitious and just as transformative as Australia’s.

‘Basic Policy for the Realisation of GX’ provides for mission targets for key sectors.

Green Transition Bonds funding ammonia, hydrogen, offshore wind and next generation solar together with bold economy-wide mechanisms to drive industrial transformation and competition.

Both countries’ industrial strategies – focused on energy security and economic resilience – are designed to bring about big shifts in economic, energy and industrial composition.

As we move beyond immediate crisis into long-term economic resilience, this shift in competitive advantage strengthens the case for close coordination and collaboration.

Our work together will build a more resilient region.

Future comparative advantage and economic resilience: green iron and critical minerals

I am indebted to a recent Lowy Paper by Reuben Finighan and Ryan Neelam.

One of the drivers of our complementarity is the entirely different shape of our industrial economies – which drive divergent net zero strategies:

Australia leaning in to our resources and to our renewables advantage.

Japan in its energy-intensive industry, leaning on ammonia, hydrogen and CCS.

Close attention from both governments, from industry and the investment community, should drive deeper technological and industrial collaboration and an evolving, even more comprehensive complementarity.

Take green iron.

If Japan imported iron from Australia instead of producing it in an expensive and carbon-intensive process onshore, it would reduce Japan's energy consumption by more than one exajoule.

For those of you who are not familiar with an exajoule, it’s a lot.

It is larger than Japan's planned nuclear energy use in 2040.

It will also halve the emissions Japan needs to achieve between 2030 and 2040 to meet Japan’s reduction commitments.

It would lift Japanese competitiveness and deliver investment in Australian industry, productivity and export diversity.

That is not an argument for divergence from Australia's vital energy and resource security role in Japan and our other partner economies.

Far from it – it is a call to deepen our technological, industrial, economic and security collaboration to make sure we deliver for each other in 2035, in 2045 and 2055 even more effectively.

The old certainties are gone.

The rules-based order is in peril.

The way countries’ trade is changing, protectionism is rising, and our businesses face a more complex and uncertain trading environment.

Industrial subsidies and unfair trade practices have concentrated critical industrial processes – like critical minerals processing and key metal smelting – in one economy for strategic purposes.

Tariffs are being applied in a retaliatorily and indiscriminate way, threatening competition and resilience.

In the age of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space technology, a contest for technological supremacy creates unique challenges for middle powers as we seek to position our peoples, businesses and our future security.

Towards a century of friendship

In this crucial decade of change and a shift to lower carbon emissions, industry, resources, energy and technology must be at the centre of Japan and Australia's future security and resilience effort.

During Prime Minister Takaichi’s visit in May, our two governments announced a joint commitment to expand cooperation on critical minerals production, to address our most urgent supply chain vulnerabilities.

Japanese investment in Australian resources sector has a long and proud history, and critical minerals will be a core pillar of future economic and national security strength.

Last month I was at the opening of the Alcoa-Sojitz Gallium project in Western Australia.

Very proud of how fast we have moved together to bring this critical project forward.

Japan’s Sojitz has been absolutely critical to that work.

The Sojitz representative Mr Katsunori Okada, who is the COO Metals, Mineral Resources & Recycling and Japan’s Mr Kazumi Nishikawa, the Director-General, the Minister's Secretariat of Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) both spoke eloquently about the project and their teams’ efforts – with real pride, with real pride.

They did Japan proud on that day – and we should endeavour to bring more Japan–Australia projects like this to Final Investment Decision (FID) and into production.

Once operational, the Alcoa-Sojitz facility is expected to produce around 100 tonnes of gallium every year – that’s about 10 per cent of global demand in one joint Australia–Japan facility.

We will continue to work together on projects like this to build more secure, more diverse and more resilient supply chains.

When Prime Minister Takaichi was here, our nations also signed the Australia–Japan Strategic Cyber Partnership.

This commits us to the joint development of cyber defences, to sharing threat intelligence in real-time, and to building the collective cyber security of the wider Indo-Pacific.

In July – as the Vice Chancellor indicated – I signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Quantum Science, Technology and Innovation with my Japanese counterpart, Minister Kimi Onoda.

That agreement didn’t come from nowhere; it builds on decades of collaborative scientific research and innovation between our two countries.  

It will support deeper bilateral cooperation across the breadth of our quantum ecosystems, covering infrastructure access, talent exchange, and joint research, commercialisation, supply chain resilience, and workforce development.

Within weeks, that Memorandum has delivered practical results.

Fujitsu, Monash University, and the CSIRO signed an agreement giving Australian researchers and students access to one of Fujitsu’s quantum systems and deepening the research links between our two countries, bringing Australia’s world-leading quantum research capacity to work for both Australia and Japan’s technological objectives.

Critical minerals, cyber, quantum.

Three economic levers and security levers that would have been unimaginable to the Prime Ministers who signed the Basic Treaty 50 years ago.

But all three of those will determine middle power and regional economic and geopolitical resilience well into the 21st century.

Japan and Australia have long understood that our both of our security and prosperity are, in the end, the same project – and that both are best realised through deep partnership.

Fifty years ago, two governments who knew from bitter experience what a lack of trust could cost, chose the promise of the future over the suspicions of the past.

The best way to honour that remarkable anniversary is to continue investing in our relationship, and working hard together, so it can help us meet the challenges of the next half-century.

Thanks very much for welcoming me here today.