With the next big wave of economic change under way, Australia stands at the intersection of unprecedented global demand and abundant national supply. This is a transformative chance to fulfil our environmental responsibilities while securing our national prosperity.
For decades, Australian minerals have been sought by every nation looking to industrialise. Now they are vital to every nation seeking to decarbonise.
Our national resources are doubly important to economies such as Indonesia and India that are looking to do both – growing their economies and lifting their citizens’ living standards, while reducing their emissions.
For a long time, those two ambitions were framed as competing priorities – a false choice between economic growth or action on climate change, between creating jobs or protecting the environment.
Not only can these two goals work together, they have to in order for Australia to meet our net zero targets and for the world’s fastest-growing countries to meet theirs.
This is the framework our government is working to build through our Safeguard Mechanism, which incentivises industry to invest in technology to reduce emissions, as well as providing the certainty that enables businesses to plan for the long term.
We also want to ensure business and industry can access reliable and affordable clean energy to reduce their input costs and emissions. This is what Rewiring the Nation is all about.
For too long, Australia has been held back by a national energy grid built for when solar panels powered pocket calculators, not households.
Our upgrading of the national energy grid will create new jobs on major projects across Australia and they will ensure the next generation of Australian jobs in advanced manufacturing, technology and critical minerals can be powered by renewable energy.
Australian minerals are essential to our nation fulfilling its environmental responsibilities. But the story doesn’t end there. The world’s transition to net zero will be powered by Australian minerals.
This is the big opportunity we have – not just achieving our climate goals, but helping other nations meet theirs.
Some say because Australia only represents about 1 per cent of global emissions, we’re too small to make a difference.
But as Professor Ross Garnaut has made clear, if we become a renewable energy superpower, we can help cut up to a further 7 per cent.
Over the coming decades, the pursuit of net zero will be the great driver of the global economy and global technology.
Whether it is lithium, cobalt, rare earths or critical minerals, the building blocks of the clean energy economy can be found on our continent. They are essential to every battery, electric vehicle, wind turbine and solar panel.
This is why our government is working to secure new trading opportunities in these fields, including new critical minerals and green hydrogen partnerships with India and Japan; commencing negotiations on critical minerals with the European Union; and the new “Australia-United States Climate, Critical Minerals, and Clean Energy Transformation Compact” that President Biden and I signed in May.
It means Australian projects can win access to the billions of US dollars being invested in clean energy through the Inflation Reduction Act.
I want Australia to be a leading supplier of the resources that will help other countries embrace clean energy technology.
I also want us to design and manufacture more of it here ourselves.
This is the key purpose of our National Reconstruction Fund.
Beyond all these immediate opportunities, there is the new frontier of green hydrogen.
Green hydrogen is the key to the Australia becoming not just a provider clean energy to our region but an exporter of energy-intensive products – green steel, green aluminium, green ammonia.
There’s a global race under way to make this technology work. Our government’s
$2bn Hydrogen Headstart program is about making sure Australian innovators can compete for that prize.
Australian minerals have given us a tremendous natural advantage in a world moving to net zero.
By making the right investments in our skills, energy and technology, we can convert this moment of opportunity into a generation of prosperity.
Anthony Albanese is Prime Minister of Australia. This is his speech to the Minerals Week Dinner in Parliament House on Monday night.
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The crucial ingredient that the fastest-growing economies in human history have in common is Australian minerals. And just as Australian minerals have made so much of the present possible, they will be at the heart of building our better future.