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

Regrettably, last week, Tomago Aluminium made the announcement that it would go to consultation with its employees about the potential closure of the smelter. Tomago Aluminium is Australia's largest aluminium smelter, producing just under 40 per cent of what we use. It employs around 1,200 people directly, and, indirectly, there are around another 6,000 people impacted by that smelter. The smelter had to go to consultation as a legal requirement of its enterprise bargaining agreement, and I want to speak to those people that were there at a quarter to six last week hearing the news. Your government stands with you. We need to work through this problem in a very sensible, systematic way. We need the New South Wales government to work through it with us as well, and we also need the owners of that smelter to be part of these negotiations.

I want to specifically thank the unions, who have really engaged with employees. The AWU—the Australian Workers' Union—the AMWU, TWU, the ETU and Hunter Workers have all played a really important role, and I also want to thank those concerned people who have reached out to my office and Minister Ayres's office with some brilliant ideas, particularly Oliver Yates, whom I met with this morning on a special finance vehicle. There are some great ideas coming forward, and we are leaning into this problem.