Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Now, the National Reconstruction Fund and what it will do to benefit the economy: if you have a product like that I spoke about before, lithium, you can put it on a ship, export it off, wait for it to be made into a product—a battery, or everything that goes into a solar panel is also, of course, produced here. We can import it back, and take solar panels as a good example. Currently, over 85 per cent of the world's solar panels are produced in one country. If things continue to project, that figure will rise to over 95 per cent in a decade. If you think about the role that renewables play and how vulnerable that makes the world to supply chains, it makes absolute economic sense for us to, where possible, make products like that here. It's a matter not just of creating jobs here and it's a matter not just of creating higher economic growth here; it's also a matter of our national security and our resilience, our capacity to stand up for ourselves. And that's why we support the National Reconstruction Fund, with $15 billion in it.

We also have legislation before the House on our Housing Australia Future Fund. Both of those policies were announced in budget reply speeches at a time when opposition leaders used to come out with policy. Both of those were announced, both of those were taken to an election, and both of those we got a mandate for. That will produce an increased supply of housing. When you build housing, you create jobs, you create economic activity—

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