ACTU invokes ‘Trumpian dystopia’ in green agenda push

The ACTU says green industry policies are needed to stop coal communities from becoming hotbeds for an Australian version of the ‘politics of resentment’ being stoked by Donald Trump and JD Vance.

ACTU president Michele O'Neil. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

ACTU president Michele O’Neil says green industry policies – including Labor’s Future Made in Australia plan – are needed to stop coal communities from becoming hotbeds for an Australian version of the “politics of resentment” being stoked by Republican Party nominees Donald Trump and JD Vance in the US.

With Labor’s $22.7bn flagship plan to boost Australian manufacturing facing an uphill battle to pass the parliament, Jim Chalmers accused the Coalition of grounding its opposition to the government’s legislation on arguments spawned from the “darkest, strangest corners of the far right”.

“This is a contest between the maddies over there and the mainstream over here,” the Treasurer said. He warned the Coalition was voting against measures that would provide a new framework for the spending of billions of taxpayers’ dollars and a “proper assessment of spending” decisions taken under the Future Made in Australia banner.

J.D. Vance (R) gives a thumbs up as he shakes hands with US former President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Anthony Albanese said the government’s plan would help “Australia to make more things here” and become “more resilient as an economy”.

“We can make things here. We can add value here. We can do more than dig things up out of the ground,” the Prime Minister said.

“We can build an economy where manufacturing is every bit as strong as mining.”

In an address on Wednesday morning to a workplace relations forum hosted by the Australian Industry Group, Ms O’Neil said the Future Made in Australia plan was “arguably the biggest spending package on climate and the clean energy transition and on potential manufacturing in any federal budget in our history”.

But she also critiqued the policy because it did not contain the “same game-changing supports for green iron, steel and aluminium as it does for critical minerals and hydrogen”.

“It’s a missed opportunity,” Ms O’Neil said. “Green minerals are quite possibly Australia’s biggest economic opportunity in the transition and could be a major contributor to the creation of meaningful, secure and well-paid jobs in Australia.”

Ms O’Neil said there was “more work to be done”, arguing that Australia could become the world’s “green forge”. “The government’s put a flag down about this with $80m to further study green metals,” she said. “But I think that is just a very small start.”

The speech came as more than 100 protesters occupied the marble foyer at Parliament House, calling for the government to ban new coal and gas developments and enact a tough climate trigger in federal environmental laws.

Ms O’Neil said the government’s Net Zero Economy Authority and Future Made in Australia initiatives would help prevent local communities from experiencing the fate of the Appalachian region in US, where she warned workers had been thrown “onto the scrap heap”.

“High rates of unemployment, poor health and depression are driving down average life expectancy and driving up the politics of resentment which Donald Trump and JD Vance continue to stoke for their own gain,” she said. “So we can’t let this be the future of communities in the Hunter and central Queensland or in Collie.”

Former Labor minister Greg Combet, who stepped down as the chair of the Net Zero Economy Agency at the end of May to head up the Future Fund, told the National Press Club in April that hundreds of billions of dollars of investment was needed to fund Australia’s transition to net-zero emissions by 2050. But he was unable to guarantee the investment would result in blue-collar workers in emissions-­intensive industries being paid the same after they transitioned to the clean-­energy jobs of the future.

Ms O’Neil said that following Mr Vance’s selection as Mr Trump’s running mate, the “former mining region of Appalachia is in the international spotlight, and the story of that region is illustrative of how damaging it will be if we fail to deliver a truly just transition”.

“Politicians like Donald Trump have lied through their teeth, insisting that coal was never going away,” she said.

“Trump and his allies worked with the coal bosses to torpedo any just transition policies that would have actually supported workers and built new jobs.

“Their policy in effect was to let employers off the hook and to throw workers onto the scrap heap. And the results have been devastating. With no bridge to a clean-energy future, the region has been thrown into a spiral of generational poverty and social upheaval,” Ms O’Neil said.

Labor’s Future Made in Australia legislation faces opposition from both the Coalition and the Greens, with the environmental party leader Adam Bandt expressing grave concerns about the policy on Wednesday.

“What we don’t support and are concerned about is legislation that is about creating an election slush fund for more coal and gas,” Mr Bandt told the parliament. “Now, there’s a real question mark over this legislation.”

“For Labor, a Future Made in Australia is a future for more coal and gas … There’s nothing in this legislation that rules out public money going to more coal and gas or infrastructure that supports it.”

Dr Chalmers used parliamentary question time to reject the argument from opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor that Labor would transform the Australian Renewable Energy Agency into a $4bn election year slush fund as “mad and bizarre stuff”.

“They’re voting against communities benefiting from this investment. They’re voting against aligning our economic and national security interests,” he said. “This is a contest between the maddies over there and the mainstream over here.”

While Mr Albanese promoted his $22.7bn Future Made in Australia agenda as a chance to seize a “decisive decade for our nation’s future”, The Australian has obtained documents under Freedom of Information laws showing the $15bn National Reconstruction Fund did not receive any correspondence from Dr Chalmers, Industry Minister Ed Husic or the Department of Treasury about the policy before its introduction to parliament.

Opposition industry spokeswoman Sussan Ley said it was clear Labor’s “$15bn manufacturing fund is not, and has never been, in any way co-ordinated with Labor’s Future Made in Australia program”.

“This obliterates the credibility of anything Anthony Albanese has said to date on his manufacturing policies,” she said.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton said the Future Made in Australia agenda was “essential to secure Australia’s economic future, competitiveness and longevity” and “the parliament should support it”.