Senator Blyth has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today. It has been circulated and is shown on the Dynamic Red:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The failure of the Albanese Labor Government's Future Made in Australia agenda, which is killing Australian industry from steel to nickel, with Whyalla's blast furnace permanently closed, Liberty Bell Bay shut and Nickel West suspended despite billions in taxpayer support for Whyalla, Tomago and Nyrstar, while Labor continues to burden industry with high energy costs and then falsely suggests that questioning failed taxpayer-funded bailouts is the same as opposing Australian manufacturing jobs.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The failure of the Albanese Labor Government's Future Made in Australia agenda, which is killing Australian industry from steel to nickel, with Whyalla's blast furnace permanently closed, Liberty Bell Bay shut and Nickel West suspended despite billions in taxpayer support for Whyalla, Tomago and Nyrstar, while Labor continues to burden industry with high energy costs and then falsely suggests that questioning failed taxpayer-funded bailouts is the same as opposing Australian manufacturing jobs.

This is an important motion today. Labor promised all Australians a future made in Australia, and I think everyone in this place knows what a Labor promise is worth. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been poured into heavy industry to maintain sovereign capability in Australia. Let me be clear. Sovereign capability is vital for a country like Australia. We need to be able to make structural steel, we need to be able to have aluminium, and we need to be able to make glass. Earlier this week I heard Senator Canavan reflecting on the fact that today in Australia we could not build Australia's Parliament House, because we cannot make the glass that is required to build a building like this. It is vital that we are not dependent on international supply chains when it comes to our sovereign capability. We need to make sure that we can keep heavy industry right here in Australia.

We are living in the most dangerous strategic times since the end of World War II. Labor admits that that is the case, and, with global disruptions in Europe and the Middle East, we should be acutely aware of any risk to our sovereignty. The problem is that, while billions are pouring in to bail out heavy industry and maintain sovereign capability, the underlying reason for why the taxpayer funded bailouts are required in the first place has never been addressed by this Labor government.

Labor's pursuit of net zero has essentially killed heavy industry and impoverished us all. Australia has all the iron ore, coal, gas, nickel and critical minerals we could ever need to be one of the most prosperous nations in the world. We are the envy of other nations because of what we have in the ground. We not only have the natural resources required; we have the human ingenuity and the capability to make, grow and build everything we could possibly need. Yet, under Labor, Australian businesses can no longer remain commercially competitive. It means it's too expensive to run furnaces, smelters and refineries, and we cannot turn our resources into products here in Australia in an economical and profitable way anymore.

Labor is continuing to burden industry with high energy costs and then falsely suggests that questioning failed taxpayer-funded bailouts is the same as opposing Australian manufacturing jobs. The two things are very different. Heavy industry is being crippled by Labor's net zero fantasy, carbon tax, red and green tape, uncompetitive company tax, and government driven compliance and regulatory burdens. How on earth can our heavy industry compete on a global scale under this Labor government? Even with the billions of taxpayer-dollar bailouts, our heavy industry is still failing. That is extraordinary.

Just this week in my home state of South Australia, the steel blast furnace in Whyalla was not able to be restarted, even after a $2.4 billion bailout. That's taxpayer dollars, to maintain this critical piece of infrastructure in Whyalla. Whyalla produces 75 per cent of Australia's structural steel, and we will now have to rely on international supply chains. And 500 employees and 100 labour hire workers are all out of work overnight, and another 200 embedded contractors are facing uncertainty. Experts estimate that steelmaking could be absent from Whyalla for two to four years. Taxpayers are also expected to fund another $60 million to $80 million in redundancies. I'd like to shout out to the local member for Grey, Tom Venning, and the fierce advocacy he has done for the community of Whyalla and the steelworks.

I also rise to contribute to the debate on this urgency motion. The Albanese Labor government fights to keep Australian industry. We fight for good industrial jobs in Australia and for Australians. That is why we're building a modern energy system and reserving Australian gas for Australian industry. We're putting our shoulder to the wheel and rebuilding Australia's industrial base, and we're doing that because we know that a stronger Australia is an Australia that can make more of what it needs here at home. Australia has the workers, the resources, the energy and the ideas that the world needs, and our government's Future Made in Australia agenda is turning those strengths into jobs, investment and resilient supply chains.

This is not about making everything; it is about making more here in Australia, adding more value to Australian resources and ensuring that the benefits flow to workers, to local businesses and to local communities. It's about backing the strategic capabilities Australia needs: renewable and reliable energy, critical minerals processing, green metals, defence and advanced technologies, and world-class research and innovation. Rebuilding and strengthening Australia's industrial base is hard work. Establishing new industries is not a linear process. But our government unashamedly backs Australian industry, we back Australian jobs and we back Australian workers, just as we have in Whyalla.

Of course, this is a very difficult time for the people of Whyalla. The announcement by the administrator of the steelworks that the efforts to restart the blast furnace over recent months were unsuccessful will impact on workers, their families and the broader community. And it is clear that years of failure to invest in the steelworks mean that it is now beyond repair. What these workers in Whyalla need now more than ever is a government that backs them in, that acknowledges how tirelessly they have worked throughout this challenging period. They need a government that is committed to a domestic steel manufacturing industry and a government that is securing the long-term future of the Whyalla steelworks alongside the local jobs and the local families who rely on it.

We believe in a future made in Australia, we believe in a strong future for Whyalla and we believe in Australian industry and all of its potential. That's why our government established the national reconstruction fund, a $15 billion investment fund to back Australian industry and to drive the industries of tomorrow. To date, that fund has announced 32 investments, totalling some $1.83 billion across resources, biotech, artificial intelligence, food and beverage manufacturing, housing and quantum development. The work of that fund to grow domestic industrial capabilities is central to our economic security, and it's central to our resilience. This work is more important now than ever.

Together, through the national reconstruction fund, targeted Future Made in Australia programs and smelter interventions, the Albanese Labor government is making Australia stronger and ensuring that our resources, energy, skills and ideas are creating value for Australians. We are strengthening supply chains, crowding in private investment and building the industrial base our country will need for decades to come. We're supporting jobs in our industrial heartlands, and we are creating the jobs of the future. What workers want and what industry needs right now is a government that backs them in. What they need is a government that believes in their potential and that believes in a future for local manufacturing—and one that not just believes in it but is prepared to stand up for it.

What they don't need is an opposition that talks them down. What they don't need is an opposition that abandons them. They don't need representation like they've had from the Liberal Party in the past. We all remember Joe Hockey, on the floor of the other place, goading the car industry to leave Australia, to leave my home state of South Australia, to turn their back on South Australian workers, to turn their back on Elizabeth and to turn their back on our state. And do you know what? After they goaded them to do it, they did. Our state has lived with the consequences of that. Our government and the Malinauskas government have been trying to do something about it. Workers in our state remember the Liberal Party's record on that. We remember how you behaved then. We'll remember how you respond now. Workers in my state want a government that will back them in, not an opposition that will talk them down.

I thank Senator Blyth for this matter of urgency, which One Nation supports. Last night I read a list of large job losses from the last few months here in Australia. Today there's one more to add. The retailer Cue, or Veronika Maine, has now gone into receivership. They may be saved, and I hope for the sake of their 69 stores and hundreds of people that they are. Other retailers in administration or liquidation recently include Betts, Lincraft, Barbeques Galore, Aussie Disposals, Stateside Sports, AH Beard, Harold's and regional retailer Proud Poppy. These are names familiar to all Australians. I've shopped at them. This is personal. These are people in their communities that are now out of work.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in the 12 months prior to February 2026, nationwide retrenchments rose to 257,900 people. That is more than a quarter of a million people—Australians who no longer have a job, families without a breadwinner. Every community is suffering. Every retailer is feeling it. Unemployment has risen under the Albanese government from 3.4 per cent to 4.5 per cent. This follows on from the 14,152 business insolvencies last financial year—the second highest on record after the all-time high of 14,700 recorded under Treasurer Chalmers the year before. Australians having a go to provide for themselves and people we know in our communities keeping our local shops in business? No longer. There are 691,500 Australians without a job and looking for one.

Another million Australians on top of that are working and not getting all the hours they need to keep their heads above water. Imagine how hard that will be with another one million planned new arrivals to compete with thanks to Labor's mass immigration program. Those still with jobs are increasingly classified as the working poor, dependent on government handouts to survive, which is exactly how totalitarian governments throughout time have wanted their citizens: desperate, broke and totally reliant on government.

The bailout offered to keep Tomago aluminium smelter in business will, in my experience, only be temporary. Labor and the Liberals did the same thing with the Australian car industry. Remember when we made cars? Remember all those union jobs? Subsidies were used to keep the car industry alive long enough to transition from local manufacturing to a fully imported supply chain. Then the subsidies ended. They were pulled.

With modern, computerised, AI driven automated assembly lines, cost-efficient manufacturing is possible here in Australia and has been for years. Modern manufacturing does not need cheap labour. It needs proximity to raw materials, which we have, and capital to build our facilities. We have $4.5 trillion in capital stored in superannuation funds looking for profitable, safe investments. It needs a regulatory environment to free up that investment. A One Nation government will deliver that.

American industry has worked all this out. In the last few years, Apple, GE, Samsung, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Intel and Micron have all moved manufacturing back to the United States. Why? Because they're on a track back to cheap power. If they can do it, so can we. Of course, this does need steel, and this Labor government just allowed our steel mill in Whyalla to close, with 600 jobs lost. That's 600 jobs gone. That's another heavy industry facility where subsidies were used as a bridge to allow the plant to be hollowed out and then replaced with imports. The LIBERTY Bell Bay manganese smelter closed in July—another 250 jobs gone. Instead of encouraging investment in manufacturing and heavy industry to bring jobs home, this government is growing the Chinese economy. When did unions stop worrying about Australian workers and start cheering on the Chinese Communist Party? Or was the $15 billion ripped out of Victoria's Big Build a pay-off for silence? Who knows?

India is emerging as a major source of steel, using iron ore and coal. Where do they get theirs? Oh, that's right! They get their iron ore and coal from Australia, of course. Australian workers are wondering how it could be possible to ship iron ore from Western Australia and coal from New South Wales and Queensland to China and India, make the steel using automated production and then ship it back here. I'll tell you. It's a one-word answer—energy. It turns out weather-dependent-power windmills can't sustain manufacturing and heavy industry and can't sustain an economy. This government's insistence on advancing ideology over enterprise is costing everyday Australians their jobs, their homes, their marriages, their families and their dignity. The next election can't come soon enough.