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

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

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

It's legitimate to ask hard questions. But it's also important to be honest about why we are where we are, and these are the facts. And I will take that interjection. These are the facts. The facts speak for themselves in this.

The other issue I want to raise today is one that has been frustrating the people of Maitland for years now: the Maitland flyover. Back in 2016, when the coalition was in government, my community was crying out for a solution to the gridlock in central Maitland. The traffic congestion was choking the town and making life harder for locals and businesses alike. What did we get? In true Liberal style, we got a job half done. They delivered an eastbound flyover but failed to build, let alone plan, for the westbound one. Anyone who drives through Maitland knows that the problem was always a two-way problem. They ignored it. They took the cheap option, and now we're paying the price. Today, we see the ramifications of that shortsightedness.

Maitland is one of the fastest-growing areas in New South Wales. There are thousands of new homes, families and businesses. It's an incredible place to raise a family. But we have one incomplete piece of critical infrastructure that should have been finished years ago. If the former government had shown any foresight, they would have done the job properly. Everyone knows it. All the locals know it. Everyone who's in town knows it. And the people who've just arrived are soon being educated about it. The coalition should have built both flyovers, east and west, together, but instead they left it to the next government, to our government, to clean up the mess.

So here we are again, getting on with the job, fixing another of their blunders and making sure the community finally gets the infrastructure it deserves. My constituents don't necessarily actually care which political party gets the credit; they just want the job done safely, efficiently and with respect for their growing community. I learned something off the great Milton Morris. He once said to me, 'Meryl, if you don't care about who gets the credit, you can get a lot achieved.' We don't care about credit. We just want things done—planned and efficiently executed. That's exactly what this Albanese Labor government is doing. We're planning for the long-term, we're funding projects properly, transparently and in partnership with local and state government, and we're not chasing headlines. We're delivering results.

What ties these two issues together—Tomago aluminium and the Maitland flyover—is a pattern of neglect and a failure to plan. When those opposite were in government, they were too busy fighting each other to fight for communities like mine. That is the great disappointment in all of this. They failed to plan, they failed to deliver and now Australians and my community, in particular, are living with the consequences. Whether it's energy policy, infrastructure, housing or health, the story is the same—a lost decade of inaction, a decade where they were so busy fighting each other with their climate wars that, sadly, seem to be continuing and so down in the weeds with ideology that they weren't getting on with the practical part of governing a nation. You need to make decisions. You need to plan. You need to be effective. You need to have foresight and strategy, and you need to methodically execute that strategy. You need to deliver.

That is what is happening under our government. We are different. We want to do things thoroughly, well and steadily. In our prime minister, we have a man that has a steady hand on the tiller. He is someone who has a strategy and is executing it. That is so important. We don't need more chaos and division. We don't need more mixed signalling to the international investment community about whether to invest in Australia or not. We are a reliable partner. We will continue to deliver for the Australian community. We are rebuilding local infrastructure, not just announcing it. We are supporting regional communities, and we're going continue to deliver for those communities.

Debate adjourned

Sitting suspended from 13:36 to 15:59