Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Understandably, some of us have been celebrating a new job post the election—a new job as a parliamentarian. But tonight I do want to focus on the thousands of Australians who are facing an uncertain future for their jobs. Right now, there is a rolling crisis affecting the nation's metals manufacturing industries, with at least 10 smelters and refineries facing an uncertain future—many with their hands out seeking government support—as they are crushed under the two pincers of ever-rising energy costs in this country and the aggressive industrial tactics of the Chinese Communist Party.

We should not forget—it has gone too unremarked—that, as a nation, we have effectively lost our nickel industry in the past year to these same issues. There have been 10,000 jobs lost in the Australian nickel industry in the last year. Only a few nickel mines are left and we no longer can smelt or refine nickel here in this country. Nickel is instructive and should be a lesson, for the government and for our nation, about how we've got things so wrong when it comes to manufacturing, despite the promises that have been made to us.

We were promised that this green energy future would be a boon for Australia's nickel industry, because nickel is one of the key components of many electric cars—of electric vehicle batteries. The most common battery has been a nickel-cobalt-lithium battery. The idea was that, when the climate-conscious consumers of Europe and North America went to buy their Tesla or their electric vehicle, they would want—they would demand—to have a battery that was made with green nickel, made with green energy. So that's what we and BHP went to try to do, and it has been a complete and utter failure. Surprise, surprise! No-one was paying a premium for green nickel. There is no premium for green nickel. And, while we wallowed in our gullible naivety, China came along and financed the construction of something like 20 coal-fired power stations in Indonesia, just in the last few years, and they've massively expanded their nickel production and cut us out of the market, and 10,000 jobs are now gone. As I say, it has gone largely unremarked. It's like we just move on and keep talking about this green energy stuff, saying, 'We're going to have a future made in Australia,' which is what the government says. But, under their watch, 10,000 jobs were lost in the industry; there was no future for those in the nickel industry.

Now there's an even broader and wider crisis emerging. In my part of the world, we are on the cusp, potentially, of losing the copper industry from North Queensland. Keep in mind that almost every bit of copper made in the world is made using techniques that were made and developed and invented in Mount Isa and Townsville. Mount Isa Mines, now owned by Glencore, developed the technology that underpins the modern manufacturing of copper. We should be very proud of that.

It would be an absolute national shame and embarrassment if, under this so-called Labor government's watch, that industry were to depart our shores. But that is a real prospect right now because, as I say, they can't afford to pay these enormous prices for power. Three-digit prices per megawatt hour for power are unsustainable for a competitive metals manufacturing industry. The making of metals, while complex, is basically the application of enormous amounts of energy to valuable rocks to make them even more valuable, and, with our energy prices, that just can't happen.

Clearly, the Chinese government has an explicit strategy to bankrupt many of these facilities in Western nations, and that strategy is to then monopolise that market and control it for themselves. They have done this in rare earths. They've done this in steel. They've done this in lithium. And the Labor Party's own resources minister, Madeleine King, warned a couple of weeks ago that China is looking to do that in copper and lithium now. Why aren't the government listening to their own resources minister's warnings? We all saw the Prime Minister travel to China for six days last week, and this issue got nary a mention. The Prime Minister did not seem to mention at all that the tactics of the Chinese government have cost 10,000 Australian jobs and that we're now on the cusp of losing tens of thousands more jobs unless something is done.

This is happening on the government's watch. They promised a future made in Australia. They promised Australians lower power prices. They promised Australian businesses they'd have lower power prices and more jobs in manufacturing. Nothing has happened. All we've got is words. Rhetoric is not going to pay the bills. Fancy speeches in this house are not going to keep manufacturing jobs in this country. We need to fight for them and come back to a planet called reality and start looking after Australia first.