Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor talk about a future made in Australia, but under their watch it's quickly turning into a nightmare made in Australia, especially for the metals manufacturing sector and for northern Australia. We are staring down the barrel of losing Glencore's copper smelter in Mount Isa and the refinery in Townsville. These aren't just facilities; they are the economic backbone of the region. Seventeen thousand jobs directly or indirectly depend on them. That's 17,000 families buying from local businesses, sending kids to local schools and holding entire towns together. We saw what happened when the Yabulu Nickel Refinery closed in 2016. Townsville still bears the scar.

This is a national interest issue. Copper is essential, from houses to smartphones to defence hardware, but, instead of strengthening our sovereign capability, Labor is letting it slip away while China opens new copper smelters and even Glencore is investing in a new copper smelter process in Riyadh, using the Glencore technology from Mount Isa.

Let's be clear: Mount Isa is not just a dot on the map. It's a strategic hub for defence, for biosecurity, for regional health care, for Indigenous services and for the development of the North West Minerals Province. When Mount Isa falters, so does northern Australia, and, when northern Australia falters, the whole nation pays the price. This government has poured billions of dollars into failed green hydrogen schemes while allowing our lucrative nickel industry to leave and the copper sector to falter. Labor has always had the wrong priorities, and it's always the regions that cop it in the neck when Labor's in office. Labor need to wake up because, if they don't step in and support copper and critical minerals processing in the north, there will be no future made in Australia; there'll only be a nightmare, and it'll have Labor's name all over it.