The British Connection and Australian Resilience in the 21st century

I begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today.

I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters, and culture.

Thank you to Sean, Ticky and the rest of the team at the Australian British Chamber of Commerce for the kind invitation to speak today.

This organisation’s new national resilience series is playing host to such an important public conversation.

The British connection then and now

The Australia I grew up in was an Australia seeking to reimagine its relationship with Britain.

The United Kingdom was turning away from its old imperial networks and toward the European Economic Community.

Here in Australia, we were looking at our own region and wondering how best to face the North-east Asian Ascendancy that glistened on the horizon.

There was a spirit of ‘new nationalism’ sweeping Australia, as in so many other formerly colonial communities across the world.

The Whitlam Labor Government created a new Australian honours system, worked with the public to select an independent national anthem, and gave the reigning monarch of the day, Elizabeth II, a new title: Queen of Australia.

In the late 1980s, I was in high school and old enough to observe the Hawke Government’s contributions to these historic shifts in Australian life.

Passing the Australia Acts to formalise Australia’s independence from the British Parliament and Privy Council.

And elevating the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and arts – cultivated on this continent for thousands of years before Europeans began finding their way here – in Australia’s national self-understanding.

Of course, some seemed to think Australia’s intimate association with the UK could be written up – or written off – as an ‘accident of history’.

I know – and this Chamber of Commerce has always known – that there’s nothing even remotely accidental about that deep and enduring relationship.

All public and private investment decisions – from the decision to establish a colony in Australia, with its profound consequences for First Nations peoples, to the many that followed – were considered ones.

It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that the United States and Japan overtook the UK in terms of Australian bilateral trade.

As recently as last year, the UK was the second largest source of foreign investment in Australia, and the second most popular destination for Australian investment, too.

The politics of the British connection ebb and flow, but the UK and Australia have always been materially and strategically invested in one another’s success.

And, more importantly, in democratic values and institutions and in shared strategic interests.

A partnership for a more unstable world

That enduring two-way relationship really matters for Australia – and Britain – at this juncture in global history.

We live in different neighbourhoods; yet we confront shared challenges.

Great power competition and acute strategic flashpoints in the Middle East as well as in Ukraine, where British and Australian support has made a decisive difference.

Trade volatility, overcapacity and strategic subsidisation and non-market practices in global goods and commodity markets.

A global contest for technological supremacy where middle power collaboration over norms and rules, agency and influence will determine whether we can shape artificial intelligence, quantum and other critical technologies in the interest of our peoples and a fairer world.

A shift to new sources of energy generation and transmission that has, at times, been disrupted by political opportunism and policy uncertainty.  

A resurgence of right-wing populism led by elites and insiders who masquerade as political outsiders.

Australia and the UK are being tested by these challenges on a scale we’ve not known in decades.

We can best meet those challenges if we are standing shoulder to shoulder.

So much of the recent architecture in our bilateral relationship recognises that reality.

The AUKUS agreement is just one example.

A tripartite commitment that strengthens Australia and Britain’s long-term security and supports our sovereign defence industry capabilities.

The Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement is central to the ongoing economic resilience of our partnership.

It’s not every day that I sing from the same hymn book as Boris Johnson –

But like him, I think a trade agreement that sees Australia exporting more Tim Tams to a world deprived of that essential commodity is a good deal indeed.

By eliminating tariffs on more than 99 per cent of Australian exports and improving access for services, investment and skilled workers, businesses can diversify and operate more seamlessly across both markets.

Australia and the United Kingdom will hold the second Strategic Innovation Dialogue (SID) in Canberra in September 2026.  

The SID is a bilateral mechanism established under the Innovation Chapter of the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement and supports trade in innovative goods and services.  

The Albanese Government is also working to amplify the impact and benefit of Australian research and development by aligning more closely with trusted, reliable international partners.

Last week, Australia and the European Commission marked the conclusion of treaty negotiations for Australia’s association to Horizon Europe –

The world’s largest and deepest pool of research and development funding, worth $155 billion AUD.

The intention is that Australian research organisations will be able to apply for Horizon Europe FP9 projects from early next year.

The UK, of course, is already an associate of Horizon Europe.

Australian researchers will work with British, European and Asian partners to make discoveries and commercialise technologies that change the world in clean energy, health and biotechnology, digital technology and AI, materials science, and advanced manufacturing terms.

I can’t wait to see more Australian scientific and research talent embedded in global innovation networks –

And more global commercialisation capability scaling up Australian ideas and breakthroughs for our mutual benefit.

This is what builds national resilience for the long haul.

Making sure Australia and its partners can make our way in the world on the strength of our combined skills, talents, ideas and technologies.

And more than that, it is a choice about the value of knowledge in building our capacity and prosperity, and the importance of our friendship.

Reindustrialising for resilience

Of course, resilience doesn’t mean much unless an economy has the capacity to make the things it needs, when it needs them most.

This has been the hard lesson – certainly for Australia – in successive shocks over the past several years.

For decades, Australian policymakers were hands off when it came to domestic manufacturing capability.

The market would decide which industries flourished and which industries left our shores.

This orthodoxy has left Australia with capability gaps.

The Albanese Government is driving reindustrialisation in Australia –

Investing in businesses and projects that maximise this continent’s clean energy advantage and deliver domestic manufacturing capability, local innovation, regional productivity and good jobs onshore.

Market forces alone cannot do that work.

Australia needs an industrial strategy to shape the future. The alternative means the future will shape us.

The OECD’s recent Steel Outlook, for example, notes that non-market practices and subsidies have thinned out expected profit margins and dampened incentives to modernise industrial steelmaking facilities.

Australia is determined to be a key global producer of low- or zero-emissions iron, steel and aluminium.

It’s not just the right thing to do in emissions terms – it’s an economically, industrially and strategically essential thing for the largest island nation in the world to be doing.

That’s why the Albanese Government and the South Australian Government intervened decisively at Whyalla Steelworks.

Helping to restore the viability of that business and give it the best possible chance of successful sale to a new commercial owner.

It’s why we’ve refused to allow shocks in the global aluminium market to rob Australia of the chance to be a world-leading provider of low-emissions aluminium, alumina and HPA.

The Albanese Government and the Crisafulli Government worked hand-in-glove to provide Australia’s second largest aluminium smelter, at Gladstone in Central Queensland, with a path to success through to the 2040s.

The recent Federal Budget reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to building a more secure, self-reliant and productive Australia.

Budget measures were focused on helping the nation through the disruption of the global oil shock and other supply chain issues.

Central to the Budget was the $10 billion Australian Fuel Security and Resilience Package.

This was focused on improving fuel and fertiliser security, adding 10 days of liquid fuel stockholding, and providing for a new government-owned Fuel Security Reserve of roughly a billion litres of jet fuel and diesel.

My department – the Department of Industry, Science and Resources – has been working with counterpart agencies across government to bolster supply chain resilience.

There were funds in the Budget for the Office of Supply Chain Resilience.

And support for CSIRO’s Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool –TraNSIT – which tests for supply chain problems in our transport infrastructure.

While focusing on the immediate, the Budget builds on four years of delivery with impact for a stronger, more productive, more resilient industrial Australia.

Safety and security in the AI age

The other element of resilience I wanted to mention here is that of artificial intelligence.

I do view this set of new technologies as fundamentally a resilience challenge for Australia.

This is not just a question of investment and growth and economic opportunity, although of course it is all those things.

It is also a question for Australia about whether we just want to be a cork bobbing on the ocean of great power competition over technological supremacy.

Or whether we want to work with partners to shape investments in Australia that mean we are part of shaping, with our partners, the future of this range of technologies.

Yes, the frontier models and the technology that citizens access now –

But also making sure business has the capability to embed the technology into products and services that they offer as well.

This is fundamentally an economic question, but it’s also a resilience and security question.

The Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute is working right now to monitor, test and prepare for new AI capabilities as they emerge.

The Institute has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding about the importance of cooperation with the UK’s AI Security Institute.

That cooperation will be vital.

Conclusion

I am, and we in the Government are, so invested in this vital relationship with the United Kingdom.

It goes right to the centre of our shared approach on resilience and security and economic challenges.

I know that Ticky will lead a thrilling discussion today. I hope it all goes very well.

Thanks very much.