Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question, which is about the future of manufacturing in this country—in particular, the future of smelters.

As we've said in this place many times, the sustainability of our domestic minerals and metals processing capability is vital to our national interest, and that's why we're backing jobs, backing manufacturing and backing heavy industry. The member also talked about energy. Obviously, energy is a critical part of the mix, and that's why we're investing record amounts in renewing our energy grid, backing renewable energy—which is the cheapest form of new energy—as well as improving reliability. I stood with the Prime Minister and other ministers when we backed Aussie industry with new investment in energy.

The truth is the coalition had a chance to fix these issues, but they left us with a graveyard of discarded energy policies; by my last count there were 23. We're getting on with fixing the job by taking a considered approach, and Minister Ayres, in the other place, is working very hard at this. We've put aside funding for smelters, we've put aside funding for the green iron fund and we've put aside $2 billion for aluminium, to help with their energy transition. There's more to do, but the truth is we're not going to cop attacks from the other side, who sat on their hands for nine long years and did nothing about it.

See this speech in context