Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When governments fail to govern and deliver, they fail to deliver real long-term policy. Communities like mine in Paterson and the broader Hunter region are the ones who pay. The decade of inaction by those opposite was a decade that left our communities to carry the cost of that indecision, short-term policies and their failure to plan for the future. Today I want to talk about two very clear examples of that failure— that systemic and systematic failure—to my community: Tomago Aluminium and the Maitland flyover.

As I'm sure you've heard, the situation at Tomago Aluminium is serious. It's complex and it deserves our attention and respect, not political point scoring. For 40 years the Tomago aluminium smelter has been synonymous with manufacturing in the Hunter region. It's an industrial jewel in our blue-collar electorate of Paterson. Tomago is a proud household name that generations of families have given their blood, sweat, tears and wherewithal to, creating an international industrial success story. Indeed, just under 40 per cent of every shred of aluminium that's produced in Australia comes from that plant. Let me say that again: just under 40 per cent of Australia's primary aluminium comes from Tomago Aluminium in my seat of Paterson in the Hunter region.

Australians use aluminium in every sphere of their lives. When we shop, it's used to preserve our food and drink. When we're off to the chemist, it's in the packaging that houses our pharmaceuticals. When you travel anywhere today, it's in our cars, trains and planes. For anyone who owns a home, it's in our paint, our window frames and our roofing. For people cooking dinner tonight, it's in the pots and pans. And it's not a Monday morning without leftover Sunday lamb that's been covered in foil—aluminium foil, that is. It's also in our furniture, our sporting goods and the electrical devices we us every day, including laptops and smartphones. Most importantly, aluminium is essential for the construction of powerlines, solar panels and wind turbines. Basically, if you eat, cook, take medicine, use a phone or a computer, consume electricity, travel, play sport, live in a home or sit on a couch, you need aluminium.

We have a continuous supply chain right here in Australia, from the bauxite that's extracted out of the ground and then refined to become alumina and then processed, using a lot of electricity, to become that beautiful silver alloy that is aluminium. We have it all here in Australia. But, last month, Tomago took one step closer to closure, with the announcement of employee consultations. As a result, we, as a country, are staring down the battle of producing 40 per cent less of this critical metal.

Let's be honest about how we got here. This problem didn't just appear in the last three years, when the Labor government was elected. Despite what the opposition would have you believe, anyone with even a scintilla of understanding of the Australian, or the east coast, energy market would understand that this challenge has been building for more than a decade. For 10 years, the former federal coalition government lurched from one failed energy policy to another, with 23 separate failed energy policies. They couldn't land a single one. They had a decade to provide certainty to support manufacturers to invest in new energy, transmission, storage and renewables. Instead, they gave us chaos and confusion.

Under the state Liberal government, Barry O'Farrell sold off our generators, and that has made the issue even more complicated for Tomago. Yes, in 2014, Bayswater and Eraring were sold to AGL for $1.5 billion, and there were others sold as well. Today, we're facing the ramifications of that. We know that energy prices will remain difficult for Tomago over the next decade, not because of anything that has happened in the last three years but because of the decade of neglect and failure prior to that.

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