Thank you very much, Andrew, and thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
It is good to have so many of Australia’s most productive people here in Parliament House. We have at least as much to learn from you as you do from us as the presence of so many of my colleagues here tonight testifies.
My first task tonight is to pay tribute to an industry that has done so much for our country and, indeed, for the wider world.
Our country would not be what it is today without the resources industry.
You are just two per cent of our workforce, but you are almost 10 per cent of our GDP and you are almost 60 per cent of our exports.
Over the past decade, you have paid $104 billion in company tax.
That’s $104 billion towards paying for the social security and the services upon which Australians depend.
The wider world would not be what it is today without the Australian resources industry.
The economic miracles of Japan, Korea and, above all, of China have relied on Australian coal, Australian iron ore and Australian natural gas.
Over the years, we have exported enough iron ore to lay all the railway tracks in Japan 300 times or to build the Tokyo Tower 400,000 times.
Over the past four decades, our trade with China has increased thirteen-hundredfold – not twofold, or fivefold, or tenfold, but thirteen-hundredfold – and your sector is responsible for over 80 per cent of our exports to China.
Last year, your exports to China totalled almost $80 billion.
Thanks to you, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of iron ore, close to being the world’s largest exporters of metallurgical coal and soon will be the world’s largest exporter of LNG.
As well, you have built so much of Australia’s industrial muscle. Regions like Gladstone, the Pilbara, the Hunter, the Illawarra and the La Trobe Valley are unimaginable without the resources industry.
While the resources investment boom is winding down, world supply has increased and prices have fallen, your industry remains critical to Australia’s future.
Indeed, just today, our national accounts show that mining remains our fastest growing industry with exports up over six per cent, helping to drive the fastest overall export growth in Australia since September 2000.
So please, no gloom. Do not under any circumstances underestimate yourselves.
My second task tonight is to explain how the Government is helping the resources industry as part of our plan for a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia.
This Government does have a clear vision for mining.
This Government wants our country to have the most competitive and advanced mining industry of any developed democracy.
Under this Government, the carbon tax has gone.
The mining tax has gone.
One trillion dollars’ worth of new projects – many in your industry – have been given the green light.
Red tape is being cut – over $2 billion in costs and over 50,000 pages in regulation so far.
Free trade agreements have been concluded with China, Japan and Korea.
Our free trade agreement with China, for instance, will end tariffs on alumina, zinc, nickel, copper, and coking coal.
The tariff on thermal coal will be phased out over two years.
So, we have made it easier to do business, but it doesn’t stop there.
Australia needs more investment, more exports and more jobs and there are a series of measures now in the Senate that will deliver exactly that.
They are part of the plan that we took to the people at the last election.
The Senate has legislation to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, an effective cop on the beat that stamped out thuggery and boosted productivity.
Thanks to the ABCC, industry productivity rose by 16 per cent with an economic benefit to the country of about $7.5 billion a year.
The ABCC drove construction industry disputes to record lows.
To attract more investment, we want to extend the Commission’s powers to offshore work, including the multi-billion dollar resources projects on which our future prosperity depends.
And we are determined to restore the right of entry laws that the former government promised to retain during the 2007 campaign before unions were given the green light to sit in any lunch room.
For instance, the Pluto LNG project received over 200 right of entry visits in only four months.
BHP’s Worsley Alumina plant faced 676 right of entry visits in a single year – they must have done a very good lunch there!
Our changes before the Senate will mean unions can no longer deny workers access to an individual flexibility agreement.
Our changes before the Senate will remove the union veto on greenfield projects by allowing the Fair Work Commission to approve an enterprise agreement after three months of negotiation.
Our changes mean that productivity will be genuinely considered when employees and employers are making Enterprise Bargaining Agreements.
As well, our changes will end the ‘strike first, talk later’ approach to bargaining.
None of these are new policies.
They’re not new plans.
They are precisely what we took to the people.
They are the changes that we have a mandate for.
John Howard often said that our national competitiveness was like a race with an ever-receding finishing line.
Our goal is to make our resources industry the most competitive in the world.
Our reforms across government are about making our country more productive with more jobs and more prosperity for everyone.
To take an example, as an island nation, we depend on an efficient shipping industry because 99 per cent of our trade by volume goes by ship. Between 2007 and 2013, however, the number of Australian ships on the coastal trade halved.
Bell Bay Aluminium has said that the freight costs for shipping from Tasmania to Queensland rose by 63 per cent, from $18 a tonne in 2011 – before the former government introduced the Coastal Trading Act – to $29 in 2012.
Because of this Act, it’s cheaper to ship sugar from Thailand to Australia than around our own coast.
It’s also cheaper to ship goods from Melbourne to Singapore than from Melbourne to Brisbane.
Australian jobs in Australian industries depend upon cost-effective shipping.
We will untangle this mess because coastal shipping, in all its forms, is vital to our national productivity and competitiveness.
This Government understands in the marrow of its bones that the foundation of a strong economy is strong, productive and competitive business.
Since the days of the gold rushes, your industry has been part of our national character as well as our national economy.
You have been strong, innovative and resilient and you’ve kept proving the pundits wrong.
In the 1950s, it was said that bauxite was rare in Australia, that payable oil would never be found here and that our tropical north could not be prospected.
But with ingenuity, investment and vision, you have opened deposits once thought unviable and discovered new deposits, even in areas once thought thoroughly explored.
Today, new mines are being developed and high-grade deposits are being reported.
New tungsten mines will once again make Australia one of the top 10 producers of this essential metal.
In Dubbo we have one of the world’s largest in-ground resources of rare metals and heavy earths and Australia now has the largest and richest deposits of scandium.
So for the innovators in mining, for the intrepid men and women who discover the deposits that will deliver our future prosperity, this Government has introduced an Exploration Development Incentive – a flow through share scheme to support investment in small mineral exploration companies involved in greenfields exploration.
Finally, let me say a few words about the coming climate change negotiations.
Australia is a country that keeps its commitments.
We more than achieved our first Kyoto target and we will achieve a 13 per cent reduction by 2020 on 2005 emissions levels.
But we will do so without a carbon tax and without harming our economy.
Our Direct Action Plan is working.
The Emissions Reduction Fund has so far achieved 47 million tonnes of reduction at a cost of just $14 a tonne.
We will continue to deliver reduced emissions in ways that don’t damage our economy.
We will continue to be a good environmental global citizen without taxing investment and jobs.
I look forward to working with you to build a strong economy and a clean environment.
You are citizens as well as business people. You want a better world for your children as well as a better return for your shareholders.
Together, we will build the best possible Australia on the shared understanding that a strong economy makes possible the high environmental standards that we all seek.
So, thank you so much. It’s terrific to have you all here in Canberra and it’s good to see you in buoyant spirits and may the iron ore price continue to be $63 a tonne or higher.
[ends]