Source: Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry
There’s something about WA – there’s always introduction music. I love it, but it’s very noticeable.
Good morning, everyone. Can I thank Len very much, Professor Collard very much, for the wonderful Welcome to Country a moment ago. I said to Len at our table that when he said he ran into one of my former constituents and he asked me what he thought of me, my heart stopped beating for a moment. I was pleased and relieved to hear that he had a good experience in our electorate.
And Len mentioned the 6 degrees of separation, the JP that would have done his paperwork is actually almost certainly my mum’s husband – my stepdad – who used to JP volunteer in our office. So, if you see him again, thank him for staying open for that wonderful haircut that you got, Len, but also thank him for the kind words and the kind memory.
Nicki, thank you for the terrific introduction and for getting really to the nub of some important issues that I’m going to try and cover in my contribution at the start. But no doubt as well, Aaron will want to talk to me about in a moment. But thank you for the opportunity and for the very efficient way that you ran through the issues that we’re all grappling with in the ways that we support this wonderful economic juggernaut which is WA and the WA economy, in particular.
To all of you who are members of this terrific chamber, thanks for being here this morning. But much, much more importantly than that, thank you for the jobs and opportunities that you create in this part of the country. This – as I said a moment ago – is genuinely an economic juggernaut this side of the country. And our job as a national government is not to be just kind of beneficiaries of the effort and the opportunities that you create but to be contributors to it. To be helpful partners in the prosperity that you create. And that begins by recognising the risks that you take as business leaders, the jobs and opportunities that you provide people in WA, and I wanted to make sure I begin really by conveying our gratitude for all of that.
And there are a few other people who really understand that and will want me to share as well their appreciation for everything that you do. First of all, the absolutely outstanding Small Business Minister Anne Aly, who is a proud product of WA. A very, very valued colleague of ours and of mine in the Cabinet and in the Treasury portfolio as well. And to speak out of school a little bit about how our Cabinet operates, there wouldn’t be a Cabinet meeting where Anne isn’t there really prosecuting the interests of the small business community but also the business community of WA. And so, I acknowledge Anne and I thank her for her leadership but also for her friendship.
Similarly, Varun Ghosh, who’s here at my table as well. A relatively new senator, a great friend of mine. I’m having lunch with him today because seeing Varun once in one day in a trip to the west is not enough. So, I’ll be seeing him at lunch as well. But Varun’s really has only been there a short while but very, very influential colleague of ours. A very, very important player in the Albanese government. And that’s because, as most of you know who’ve known him over the years, the way that he goes about his job – thoughtful, considered, methodical – all of the things that you want in a Senator from this really important part of the country. And so, I acknowledge his work as well.
And similarly, Ellie Whiteaker who has become known to so many of you over a longer period of time. In fact, a number of occasions that I’ve spent time with you, the familiar faces that I see around the room, it’s been organised by Ellie. And she, again, is just extraordinarily committed to the success of this WA business community, and already, like Varun, an extremely influential senator.
I think there’s an argument to be made that the new people elected at the most recent election, whether it’s from WA or from around the country – there were a few handy Queenslanders elected for the first time in the most recent election as well – probably the best intake of new talent that we’ve seen maybe since the early 80s, that first Hawke government. And Varun and Ellie are a really big part of that. So, thank you for them for being here this morning as well.
There are a number of leaders here from the chamber, obviously nationally – Andrew. I work very closely with Andrew. That’s why he’s sitting a metre from me, I’ve just discovered. He asked for that seat. He kind of eyeballs me and makes sure that I say the right things. So, thank you, Andrew, in all seriousness, for the way that we work together. I really value that and appreciate that.
Also, Matt, Esme, the sponsors, another Matt, Tony, the sponsors of today, thank you very much.
Now, I left Aaron till last partly because I know that he is changing teams and going from this chamber to the other chamber. I’m not quite sure, I don’t quite know whether that’s like going from Freo to West Coast or from West Coast to Freo. But I do know that the mighty Brisbane Lions went back‑to‑back this year, and so please put your hands together for the mighty Brisbane Lions.
But this is a perfect time to have a good conversation amongst all of you this morning for a number of reasons. First of all, the Cabinet met in Bunbury yesterday. That’s actually the sixth time that the Albanese Cabinet in 3 and a half years’ time has met in Western Australia. We’ve met 4 times in Perth, we met in Bunbury yesterday, we’ve met in the Pilbara. We actually met twice just since the election in May.
And so this is a good opportunity to make sure that the deliberations around the Cabinet table – or in yesterday’s case, around the council chamber’s table at the Bunbury Council – to make sure that it’s before and after and in the ongoing discussions that we have at the Cabinet level that you are part of that, of all of our considerations.
So, we met the Cabinet yesterday. We’ve got parliament coming back next week. And Nicki mentioned the EPBC reforms, that’s really the main order of business in the final sitting week of the Commonwealth parliament next week. We don’t take any outcome for granted in the Senate, especially those of us who don’t speak fluent Senate. But we do know that these reforms are really important, and next week is an opportunity for the parliament to do the right thing by all of you, by the economy and by the environment, and I’ll come back to that in a moment.
It’s also a good time to spend time together because the mid‑year budget update will be probably about a month from now. We haven’t quite settled the date for what’s called the MYEFO – the Mid‑Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook – but it will probably be about a month from now. We like to use the September National Accounts data that we get in the first week of December to feed into our forecasts. And so it will be some time after that at a date to be determined, but before Christmas.
And the reason I’m sort of starting the main part of my contribution there is because that mid‑year budget update, it won’t be a mini budget. There won’t be heaps and heaps of new initiatives. It will be about delivering and funding the commitments that we’ve made over the course of the last year or so, or certainly since the March Budget. But it’s also an opportunity to update our forecasts.
It’s an opportunity to take into consideration what are some fairly extreme spending pressures when it comes to estimates variations and the like, but also a chance to make sure that our forecasts take into consideration the developments in the economy over the last little while.
And what it’s really done in updating our forecasts, in doing a lot of international engagement the last 5 or 6 weeks, speaking with a lot of business leaders like yourselves, engaging this week with the International Monetary Fund, who are finalising their report card on the Australian economy which will be out I think tomorrow morning, in doing all of that, it has really been a pretty stark reminder that the global economic environment is choppy – quite choppy – right now, but also that the Australian economy is performing relatively well in those circumstances.
Inflation is a bit higher than we would like, but it’s about half of what we inherited when we came to office. Underlying inflation has been in the target band now for 3 quarters in a row. We’ve had 3 interest rate cuts this year already. And so inflation over the last few years has come down quite considerably.
Unemployment fell last week – 4.3 per cent, 4.1 here I think in WA. That’s a reminder of how strong our labour market is. Since we’ve been in office 1.2 million jobs created, about 4 in every 5 of those jobs in the private sector. And the lowest average unemployment of any government in the last half century. So, the labour market has been really strong even as we’ve made that progress on inflation, we haven’t paid for it with higher unemployment like other countries have, or much higher unemployment.
Real wages have grown for 7 quarters in a row. Very, very shortly we get an indication of whether those 7 quarters are 8 quarters. It will probably be line ball when we get that wages data very soon. But real wages have already grown 7 quarters in a row, and that’s a good thing as well.
We’ve got the debt down almost $200 billion. We’ve got the AAA credit rating affirmed by all 3 major credit ratings agencies. And so that’s all a long way of saying in the soft landing in our economy that we were planning for and preparing for and, frankly, hoping for, we’re seeing that unfold in our economy. We’ve had these 4 enormous economic shocks in the last 15 or 20 years – GFC, COVID, post‑COVID inflation spike, escalating trade tensions – and despite all of that, we have managed to achieve together, engineer together, what looks like a soft landing in our economy.
Our economic fundamentals are good, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much more work for us to do together, and that’s really our focus. Not to rest on the laurels of the progress that’s been made together in the course of the last few years but what we do from now which will matter most. And the work that we do together from now is especially important when you consider those global circumstances.
Some evidence, including in recent data, about softness in the Chinese economy. Obviously, a lot of uncertainty in the US economy. A lot of fallout from the way that these escalating trade tensions are playing out. And the global economy has kind of muddled through to here, which is better than what some of the worst fears that people had for the global economy, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that we’re out of the woods. There’s so much global economic uncertainty. And that’s why our economic plan is really important and it’s also why Western Australia is so important.
You all know the massive contribution that you make to the national economy. But I suspect you probably also know that when you look at what is playing out around the world and how things are playing out around the world, you’re also exposed to big shifts in global sentiment. And partly because you’re so export focused, which is a wonderful thing – half of Australia’s goods exports come out of the West and that’s a terrific thing – but it does mean that global sentiment, I think, weighs more heavily on your thinking as business leaders and as decision makers, and it weighs heavily on our thinking as well.
And that’s why what we’ve done since the election is to deliberately put productivity front and centre in our economic agenda but also to make sure that you are front and centre as we think through some of these difficult challenges in our economy.
And that really brings me to the Economic Reform Roundtable that I hosted a couple of months ago in Canberra. I thank Ben for the very constructive, influential role that he played representing your interests at the Roundtable. And also Andrew for the role that he played as well. You’ll read from time to time from the conservative commentators that not a lot of progress was made at that Roundtable.
And obviously I beg to differ. More than that, that commentary is frankly wrong. We made more progress than I think a lot of people were anticipating. And let me just give you a sense of the things that have already been done as a consequence of the very productive discussions that we had around the cabinet table in Canberra.
We’ve paused and streamlined the Construction Code. We’re accelerating housing approvals under the EPBC Act, already there’s more than 8,000 homes approved since August. We’ve fast tracked the introduction of that EPBC legislation into the parliament. We said we would do it next year; we brought it forward to this year. If the Senate does the right thing by the economy and the environment, we could pass it in the coming week.
We’ve launched the investor front door pilot. We’ve slashed a thousand nuisance tariffs to help get your compliance costs down. We’ve introduced the first round of regulatory reform legislation, the better regulation legislation. I introduced that to the House. The Council of Financial Regulators is shaping up 400 ideas to cut the clutter when it comes to the regulation in our financial system. We’re strengthening and streamlining our foreign investment regime, a second round of FIRB reforms underway. We’re doing a heap of work with Rita here and the other state and territory treasurers on a Single National Market, National Competition Policy. We’re making progress on our National Productivity Fund.
All of this is happening because of the consensus and the direction set by the reform roundtable. We’re finalising our AI plan. We’ve already released our AI plan for government. We’re doing more work on tertiary harmonisation. We’re consulting on the performance test for our big institutional investors.
And so, there is a lot of progress that has been made, a lot of progress being made. And the roundtable will really be the primary influence on the Budget that I hand down in May as well. The main game for the budget will be May, not December. And the main focus will be some of the directions that were set at the reform roundtable. And I know how important that is to all of you in the West – that we make our economy more productive, we make it more resilient, we get the budget into better shape building on the progress that we’ve made already. And so those are our motivations.
What I wanted to say about our agenda, economic agenda, is I think you can make the case that us getting this agenda aright around productivity, resilience, budget repair – I think WA has the most to gain from the economic agenda that we’ve put forward. You can see it in very specific areas like EPBC reform, but you can see it more broadly as well. WA has the most to gain from our agenda.
But frankly – and if you forgive me just a brief political reference here – I also think Western Australia has the most to lose if we follow through with this madness that the Coalition is proposing, which is to abandon net zero. And it’s hard to think of a dumber outcome than abandoning net zero when it comes to the certainty and the clarity and the confidence that people need and deserve to invest in our industries.
We commissioned a whole bunch of Treasury modelling around our 2035 targets and the net‑zero opportunity more broadly. And the very clear conclusion is that an orderly transition is the best for jobs and living standards and investment and for our economy more broadly. A disorderly transition will cost us jobs and investment and living standards and growth. But the only outcome worse than a disorderly transition in the Treasury modelling analysis was to abandon net zero completely.
If we as a country were to abandon net zero it would make energy prices higher, not lower. It would decimate investor confidence. And that means it would damage the WA economy and the national economy more broadly as well. If we were to abandon net zero as being urged by our political opponents that would swing a wrecking ball through the energy market, through investor certainty and through the WA economy in particular. And I think WA has arguably the most to lose from that madness which is being urged by our political opponents. And so, I wanted to make sure that I was clear and upfront about that while I was here as well.
Now, Aaron wants to ask me a few questions, and people will want to get on the app and ask me a few questions as well. I’ve already banned Ben Wyatt from participating in that act of participatory democracy. But before we get to Aaron, I really just hope that what I’ve said today and how we’ve carried ourselves here in the West and consulted heavily in the West, I really hope that it leaves you with 2 impressions of this Albanese Labor government and the way that I’m going about my job as your Treasurer.
And the 2 impressions I hope it leaves is, first of all WA is genuinely front and centre in the way that we think about our economy. We don’t want to just be beneficiaries of the prosperity that you generate in the west, we want to be partners in it. We want to make a contribution to it. We want to be a part of you finding the solutions to some of these very difficult challenges, whether it be in energy or technology or in other parts of what we are confronting together. We are being enthusiastic, willing partners in the prosperity that you generate here.
We don’t want to just be content to understand that WA has been a huge part of the national economic success story to here, we want it to be a big part of the story from here. And if you think about where our national opportunity lies at the intersection of energy and technology, advanced manufacturing, critical minerals and resources more broadly, then obviously WA is an incredibly important part of that story. That’s the first impression. You are front and centre genuinely in all of the ways that we think about our economy and the opportunities that lie ahead in uncertain times.
And the second impression, related, is that what we are trying to do – and again I feel there’s a contrast here with our political opponents – is to work through these challenges in a consultative, considered, methodical, responsible, mature way. And in order to do that that means making sure that your voices are heard and not because we have unrealistic expectations about unanimity on every issue, but we know that we make better policy when we genuinely listen to you and engage with you. And that’s why I’m really pleased to be here with you this morning.
Thanks very much.