Press Conference at Hysata, Port Kembla

ALISON BYRNES MP, MEMBER FOR CUNNINGHAM: 

Thank you, everyone, for having Carol [Berry] and I here, and we are so excited to be here today for this fabulous announcement. I would like to also acknowledge the Traditional Owners on the land in which we gather here in the beautiful Port Kembla, and pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. Carol Berry and I are so thrilled to be welcoming our friends and very regular visitors to the Illawarra, Minister Chris Bowen and Minister Tim Ayres as well, and also Darren Miller, CEO of ARENA. And a big thank you to Paul and to Dean for hosting us here today with the entire Hysata team, over 120 now, which is amazing.  

I think Minister Bowen and Minister Ayres must be completely sick of me by now. I do not stop hunting them down in Canberra. Barely a week goes by without Carol and I knocking on their door, telling them about something new and exciting that we're doing here in the Illawarra, and that's because we are leading the clean energy transition. We are at the forefront of cutting-edge technology that will be absolutely essential to our energy future. And just like these hydrogen electrolysers that we're going to see today, they're invented and commercialised here in the Illawarra.  

Our region has the very unique advantage of having a well-established industrial and commercial base with a very highly skilled workforce, and that combines perfectly with the innovation hub that is the University of Wollongong. As I said, Hysata is just one of many local success stories that began their journey in a UOW lab, and now they're shipping the commercial product across the world. We're building the advanced manufacturing that Australia needs, technology developed locally, backed by local workers and expertise, and capable of decarbonising really hard-to-abate sectors like steel and heavy transport. And a Future Made in Australia is about backing our strengths, building resilient supply chains, attracting private investment, and making sure the jobs and the benefits of energy transition are shared in places like the Illawarra. And I have made it one of my top priorities to champion our strengths at every available opportunity, promoting those opportunities to national and international decision makers.  

Just earlier this year, we held our second Made the in the Illawarra Innovation Energy Manufacturing Expo House hosted with the University of Wollongong to bring innovative companies like Hysata, our researchers, and our community leaders together to show just what the Illawarra can do. Both Minister Bowen and Minister Ayres were there. And we also had really strong interest from around the world, from ambassadors, high commissioners, and also their staff. Just a few weeks ago, I invited a delegation of embassy representatives down for a tour of our local industry, and we stopped here for lunch at Hysata. And the feedback has been outstanding. The delegation also considered the University of Wollongong, Sicona, Green Gravity, and Port Kembla Harbour, hosted by the Port Authority, just to see what we're doing here in the Illawarra.  

One of the things I love the most about our region is the way that local businesses, researchers, and industry leaders collaborate and work together. It has been so wonderful to see that continue through our Expo and also through these visits to the Illawarra. And you can see just today so many of our local business representatives here too.  

I want to give a massive congratulations to Paul Barrett and his entire team. They now employ, as I said, over 120 people. They work with local suppliers and local partners, and they invest back into our community. They are continuing to drive our local economy. And in fact, Hysata spends $20 to $30 million dollars with Australian suppliers every year. We are so proud of Hysata and everything that the team has achieved and continues to achieve. And we are really delighted to hear about this announcement today. And I'll hand over for that in a minute. But it does demonstrate our Government's commitment to seeing Hysata expand and succeed.  

I'm really, really grateful to our Ministers for backing our region. For believing in the work that is happening here, and for helping to ensure that not only is it a Future Made in Australia, but it's made here in the Illawarra. And it is my great pleasure to welcome a long-time champion of the Illawarra and of Hysata and our vital role in Australia's energy transition, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen. 

CHRIS BOWEN MP, MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY: 

Thanks, Alison. As well as acknowledging you and Carol, I acknowledge my Ministerial Cabinet colleague and policy collaborator Tim Ayres and the Chief Executive of ARENA, Darren Miller.  

It's great to be back with you. I've lost count, but Alison tells me it's the fifth time that I've been with you here, including my visit to your old premises. So it's wonderful to be back, and also wonderful to be back to not just for a visit, but to mark a very important milestone in the development of Hysata.  

Paul said a number of things which I strongly agree with. Green hydrogen has been in the news this week, and I said a few things about the hype, which Paul talked about as well. It used to be a lot of hype that green hydrogen was going to heat our homes and drive our cars, and now the now the hype is green hydrogen is dead. It's not going to happen. It's never going to work. The point I was making is the hype at both ends was utterly wrong. The fact is that green hydrogen has a future, an important future in this country and in the world. The thing is, when you're engineering and working on a great economic transformation, the decarbonisation of our economy, the biggest industrial economic transformation in our world, not everything shows according to the glossy graph at the beginning of the process, some things happen faster and more successful than was predicted.  

If you said 12 months ago that Australians were putting 15 gigawatt hours on home batteries, you'd say no that's happening. That's a lot faster than people predicted. The cost of batteries has come down 70 per cent in 5 years, which was long predicted, but it never happens, but then it happens fast. Some things are a bit harder, and green hydrogen is a bit harder. But for those who say that green hydrogen doesn't have a future, I say, well, you show me how we're going to decarbonise heavy industry. Paul again was right. We electrify everything we can electrify. There is a big global push for electrification covered through COP31. That's the right approach. But not everything can be electrified. To electrify everything, you can electrify things that need very high heat currently need gas and will need green hydrogen. And you are and will be a very important part of that.  

Again, on what Paul, said Australia has invented a lot of things, including the modern solar panel. We just don't make them here very much. That's not a mistake we can make again. So, again, you here will take that Australian technology and turn it into Australian manufacturing. And we need you to do that and to keep going.  

Again, I keep saying Paul's right. I actually prefer to think about our journey in months, not years. You hear all the time about 2030 this and 2035 that and 2050 that. To me, there's a risk in that. Makes it all sound a long way away. 2030 is now 39 months away. In two weeks’ time it'll be 38 months away. In 6 weeks' time, we'll be 37 months away. That's not old, my friends, to do what we need to do for our country and our planet. We'll do it. But we've got to keep our foot on our accelerator and keep doing the hard things as well as the easy things. John Kennedy once said, "We go to the moon, we don't do these things because they're easy, because we do them because they're hard." Whereas I recently heard someone say, "We don't do these things because they’re easy; we do them because we thought they're going to be easy." But we never thought this would be easy. Paul didn't think it'd be easy. Dean didn't think it'd be easy, but they do it anyway.  

And so I'm delighted to be back today with this investment of $49 million on behalf of ARENA. Now ARENA is, I would argue the world's most successful renewable energy funding organisation, together with the CEFC, the world's most successful green bank. And I acknowledge Darren Miller for his stewardship of ARENA. But ARENA will have and would have put Paul and Dave and the board and all your senior management through their patience. I make absolutely no apologies for that because they are spending tax-payer money here today, and the reason, one of the reasons they're so successful, is because they put you through the patches.  

Nobody gets $1 out of Darren, let alone $49 million, unless your business case is very strong, unless your research is impeccable, unless your people are worldclass, you may be funded by ARENA. The fact that you have been funded is to your credit. So, we're here today to mark the next milestone. Don't know what the milestone will be next time I come back. Perhaps will be very significant exports out the door. We'll see. But it's always a pleasure to be here. Not only because it means that Alison Byrnes will stop texting me. She's constantly texting me about Hysata and other great things happening in the Illawarra. She's a very big champion of yours, as you know, as is Carol, and we're delighted to be with you today to launch this very important milestone. Thank you.  

SENATOR TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: 

I am just so excited to be here and can't wait for the tour. I want to start by acknowledging the Country on which we stand, welcoming our international guests, acknowledging the management team from the leadership team from Hysata, and my parliamentary colleagues, the Illawarra couldn't hope for a team that fights harder for industry here.  

I really want to say as well those 120 or so staff – I do want to acknowledge all of your staff here and the work that you do every day to make this really important investment in this industrial architecture for the Illawarra and for Australia work.  

I'm trying to explain why I'm so excited about all this. Before I was elected into Parliament, I was a trade union leader, trade union organiser in the metal industry. I spent a lot of time in the steel industry in the Illawarra. This is a steel town. It's a union town. It's a proud Australian achievement the Illawarra and Port Kembla, and there's something particularly Australian about the way that this beautiful landscape has been forged into a steel capability that really matters for Australia's resilience and security, and it's been forged in a particularly Australian way.  

I was reminded of that when Dean was up here, an Italian Australian Chair, An Irish Australian CEO in the heart of the steelworks in the Illawarra -and that nothing could be more Australian than that. And all of the work and contest that goes into driving this out of what is a beautiful activity by creating something out of nothing, out of ideas that have come from the University of Wollongong, largely, and turning that into what is going to be a really important part of Australia's industrial capability.  

Sometimes these ideas in our political and our media landscape are turned into a kind of oppositional position. That the objectives of securing a highly efficient hydrogen production, hydrogen electrolyser production capability, are somehow positioned against our blue-collar heavy industrial capability. Well, there is a fine agricultural expression for that kind of argument, which is bullshit.  

We've found this somehow in our Australian politics at the moment that there's a group of people in Canberra who every time a hydrogen project fails it's like Christmas. Because it proves their kind of internal political extremism, that they that they were on one side of those hydrogen's bad or hydrogen's going to solve every problem, instead of in the middle part. And then for these people, every time a hydrogen capability or a project succeeds, it's like somebody ran over the family cat. I mean, that is that is when things are tough here, and your engineering team or your production team are dealing with one of the challenges that you have to work, what was the phrase that Dean used before "an elegant engineering solution to." We are on your side. We are on your side when you're slogging your way through bringing your engineering and science and production capability of solving those problems, we are on your side.  

Not everybody is, and we need to straighten some of this out. If we're in any other economy in the world, people are absolutely pragmatic, and that is why I'm delighted to see POSCO, Vestas, our other international investors and supporters bringing their own capability, their own ideas, as well as their own capital, because in industrial economies, hydrogen is absolutely central to existing industrial economies. Look at a firm like POSCO they are and have been for decades engaged with this.  

We must constantly modernise. We must constantly drive for efficiency. We must constantly invest in the steel industry and industrial capability if we're going to be strong and resilient and capable as Australians into the future. There is no future for our steel industry if we go backwards. There is only an Illawarra future, a Newcastle future, a Gladstone future, a Whyalla future if we go forwards and throw everything at it in a particularly Australian way. Earlier this week, the blast furnace at Whyalla closed. It's an outback facility – it looks nothing like the Illawarra. The Whyalla Steelworks, is an outback facility. 

Five hundred people in the steelworks part of a business that employs well over 1,000 Australians throwing themselves, and with the support of BlueScope and others here from the Illawarra, Australians throwing themselves at this task. It failed because the previous owner had underinvested in the company, let down by a British billionaire who undermined Australian industrial capital. The same people who pour scorn on hydrogen blame energy prices and hydrogen for that facility that undermined.  

That is not an Australian way to approach these issues. We've got to do it together. Throw ourselves at these opportunities, because we're in the beating heart of the steel industry in the Illawarra.  

Nothing's going to be easy. But the Albanese Government believes in a Future Made Australia. We're resourcing that. We're supporting it. Bowen and I, together, his responsibilities, energy and climate change, my responsibility is building the industrial capability of the future. We land in the same place every time. That is, we're about building a Future Made in Australia that's modernising our industrial capability and taking Australia forward and making us stronger.  

Your work, all of you, whether you're an investor, whether you're a supporter, whether you're in the university, whether you're a staff person here, fundamental to that Australian achievement and that Australian requirements, fundamentally patriotic thing to do. Get behind it, keep supporting each other, and let's get on with it. 

ENDS.