Speech at HILT CRC Conference

Well, Jenny [Selway, HILT CRC CEO], thank you very much for that introduction. 

I also begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners and pay my respect to Elders past and present.

I want to acknowledge Chris Page, the General Manager of NeoSmelt, and Gretta Stephens, who is here with the Climate Change Authority.

I was in Perth yesterday at the Henderson Defence Precinct announcing a $250 million-dollar commitment from our National Reconstruction Fund to Austal’s capability.

They’re building heavy landing craft for our defence forces using Australian steel rolled at BlueScope in Port Kembla.

It is so good to really be on this stage, looking out at all of you who are doing so much to build Australian industrial capability at a period where it could not be more urgent or important for Australia's national interest, for our economy, for our security, our resilience, and that that work happens apace.

Too often, the discussion around emissions reduction begins and ends with electricity. 

Materials matter just as much, maybe more, and making more metals and materials here is central to our future resilience and growth. 

So much of Australia's economy and what gets built here and in our region, of course, begins with iron ore from the Pilbara and from Whyalla.

The rail lines that carry goods across the country.

Power lines, wind turbines and the steel beams that hold up our cities.

Before anything else, the transition to a clean economy is a construction project. 

Building new industry requires materials, skills and technical expertise on an enormous scale.

Many of the materials that the clean economy needs – iron, steel, alumina, aluminum, concrete – are produced by processes that are among the hardest to reduce emissions in.

Producing these materials requires enormous amounts of energy and heat, much of which is still supplied by coal and gas.

Even technologies that can reduce emissions still need to work reliably, competitively, and at industrial scale in facilities across Australia. 

That's why Hilt CRC's work on these questions is so important for Australia, for our national interest, and for the resilience and growth and economies of our partners.

Iron ore, as I say, is a good example. 

I don't want to alienate the people in the room who are not working on iron ore, but I just want to spend a little bit of time on iron ore, and Jenny will tidy all that up later.

You know, our iron ore in Australia has been crucial for rapidly industrialising economies in our region.

Now, that reindustrialisation imperative that was so urgent for them is urgent for us – to reindustrialise our own economy.

Our energy and industrial complementarities with our partners, that are so strong today, are the foundation for the energy and industrial complementarities of the future, but they will not be the same.

As steelmaking changes, what steelmakers need from Australian iron is changing too. 

New DRI [Direct Reduction Iron] technologies require a higher grade of iron ore than conventional steelmaking.

The challenge for Australia is that much of our iron ore falls just short of the grade that buyers increasingly demand.

As part of a research project led by Hilt CRC, researchers at Curtin University are developing a process to upgrade lower-grade Australian iron ore for low-emissions steelmaking.

They’ve already shown that the process can lift Australian ore above the grade required for direct reduction.

That's not a marginal technical improvement. 

As steelmakers demand higher-grade input, applied research like this will help ensure that Australian ore remains competitive.

Because Australia can't take its advantage in iron ore for granted. 

Last year, iron ore exports were worth around $122 billion dollars and are expected to make a massive contribution to export revenues through to 2040.

Iron ore exports are critical for our national prosperity.

Maintaining that advantage will be hard enough in an increasingly volatile global environment that is less committed than Australia to free and fair trade.

It will be even harder if local firms don't adopt new technologies to keep up with overseas competitors.

Australia has a narrow window to capture a share of the emerging market for high-grade ore and for green iron.

To attract investment, deploy new technologies, and lock in buyers. 

Australia can't afford to stand still.

That's why the Albanese Labor Government's $1 billion Green Iron Investment Fund includes $500 million dollars to support the transformation of the Whyalla Steelworks, and a further $500 million dollars for new projects.

And it's why the Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund includes $750 million dollars for low-carbon metals.

Together, these investments can support the capital that is required to build new industrial capability.

But investment alone – the commercial pathway – is not sufficient to build new industries in this context.

New technologies must first be proven to work and be delivered at pilot and commercial scale.

They must be commercialised and integrated into real industrial operations.

That takes sustained collaboration in a different kind of way to the way that Australia has traditionally done this work.

Sustained collaboration between researchers and industry – solving practical problems, reducing risk, and putting Australian research to work.

That's the work HILT CRC was established to do and to lead for the Australian research and development sector.

And that's what the Cooperative Research Centres Program was designed to do by the Hawke Labor Government – bringing researchers and industry together to solve shared problems. 

For every dollar that we invest into Cooperative Research Centers, public and private, we deliver $7.73 dollars in economic output.

That's why the Commonwealth is investing $39 million dollars in HILT CRC over 10 years, alongside more than $175 million from its partners.

That collaboration is now being applied to some of the industry's hardest problems.

Upgrading Australian iron ore and our capabilities are part of that story. 

Industrial heat is another.

Iron, steel, alumina, aluminum and cement all require extreme temperatures.

For production to remain viable, that heat must be reliable, affordable, and available wherever it is needed.

Today, gas remains essential to these to these processes because it can reliably provide the heat and the feedstock that those processes require.

That is one of the reasons that the Albanese Government introduced legislation to establish a Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme and introduced that legislation into the House of Representatives just last week.

By the end of this year, we look to pass it through the Senate.

It will deliver Australian gas for Australian industry at lower costs and is designed to secure lower cost gas for industry as a source of future Australian competitive advantage.

The Albanese Government is unashamedly pro-manufacturing.

We have the biggest pro-manufacturing policy platform of any Australian Government in our history.

The legislation on gas reservation gives Parliament a clear choice between securing Australian gas and Australian industry or leaving manufacturing firms exposed to shortages and high prices.

Senators from across the Australian political spectrum will soon have the chance to vote for or against that legislation.

That vote will determine how competitive much of our heavy industry is.

A vote against gas reservation is a vote against blue-collar Australia.

It will be a vote against good, secure, well-paid manufacturing jobs in our outer suburbs and in regional Australia.

It will be vote against manufacturing and, I believe, a vote that undermines the capacity of all the work that you are so deeply engaged in and have devoted your working lives to as we move to a lower-emissions, heavy industrial Australian future.

It would be a vote against heavy industry and economic resilience.

Responsible industry policy, building that framework, and so much of my work is dedicated to that, cannot wish away the energy sources that Australian manufacturing firms rely on today.

We’re not going to turn a blind eye to the new technologies that buyers will demand in the future.

That means developing lower emissions ways to provide industrial heat without sacrificing reliability, productivity, or competitiveness.

Every year, industrial processes – or industrial process heat, I should say – accounts for around 234 terawatt hours of Australian energy demand.

That is, for the listeners at home, a lot.

Only 3% of that is electrified. 

More than 80% is provided by coal and gas.

HILT CRC’s work on thermal energy storage is just going to be so important for heavy industry, and sectors like food and beverage as well, exploring how renewable energy, renewable electricity, and other sources of heat can be restored and delivered at scale when industrial processes need it.

Of course, there won't be a single solution for every facility or every industrial process.

What works in an alumina refinery may not be the same as what works in a steelworks.

That's precisely why HILT CRC's work and the collaboration that all of you are engaged in is so important for Australia.

Those judgments can't be made from Canberra or from a laboratory alone.

They have to be worked through by researchers, by engineers, technicians, trades people, and production staff who understand what it takes to keep an industrial facility running at scale and efficiently.

This CRC brings those people together to identify the right technologies for different applications, learn from each other's work, test them at scale, and work through the practical barriers to adoption.

Sometimes that's about redesigning a whole industrial process itself. 

AlumiNEXT is one of Hill CRC's flagship initiatives.

It brings refiners, engineers and technicians together to cut emissions from existing alumina refineries while developing the next generation of refinery processes and technology.

That is the task in front of all of Australian industry and this government.

Improving and protecting Australia's current industrial capability while we build capability for tomorrow.

Getting that right is central to Australia's industrial future and for our future resilience.

And it's a technical question, a technological question, as much as it is an economic or a business question.

The pathway to Australian competitiveness in industrial steel and iron making, all of these processes in critical metals terms, is as much about listening the right technological pathway as it is about getting the business model right.

And HILT CRC's research and development and industrial partnerships I see as crucial to that vital national endeavour.

I really say all this to say I am so grateful for all of your work.

It really matters for Australia and for the future, and I know that the next couple of days of HILT CRC's deliberations here with all of you is really going to count for the country.

Thanks very much for the opportunity to have a chat with you today.