TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
ED HUSIC MP
MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
TIM WATTS MP
ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MEMBER FOR GELLIBRAND
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
MELBOURNE
TUESDAY, 15 APRIL 2025
SUBJECTS: ReMade in Australia; Federal Election; Renewables; Environment; AI.
TIM WATTS, MEMBER FOR GELLIBRAND: Well good morning, my name is Tim Watts. I'm the federal member for Gellibrand. I'm delighted to welcome everyone here to Circular Plastics Australia's recycling facility here in Altona North in Melbourne's West. I'm delighted to be joined here by my parliamentary colleagues, Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for Environment and Water, and Ed Husic, the Minister for Industry and Science, for an exciting announcement about Australian manufacturing and Australian jobs, and a future made in Australia. I'm delighted to hand over to Tanya Plibersek for this announcement.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Well, thanks so much, Tim. It's fantastic to be in Altona North today. We know that Australians care about the environment and they care about Australian jobs - and a future ReMade in Australia logo allows them to invest in both. A future ReMade in Australia logo will allow Australian consumers to choose products that are made with more recycled content. It means that Australians will be able to show their support for the Australian environment and show their support for Australian jobs. It's been such a pleasure working in particular with the Minister for Industry, Ed Husic, on this. Our departments have been working so well with Made in Australia to deliver this new logo.
This is a real sharp contrast to the Liberals and Greens teaming up to make it easier to export Australian waste recently. We know that recycling here in Australia is fantastic for the environment, and since coming to government, we've added 1.3 million tonnes of extra recycling capacity to Australia's recycling system. And we know that, as well as being great for the environment, recycling is also really good for Australian jobs. There's three jobs in recycling for every job in landfill. So Australians, when they choose a ReMade in Australia product are backing our environment and they're backing Australian workers. Thanks.
ED HUSIC, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE: Thanks, Tanya. And it is great to be here with Tanya and Tim, and particularly in Tim's electorate where manufacturing is such a big deal. And if you want to get why manufacturing matters, visit Tim's electorate and see all the jobs, full time, secure jobs that are created as a result. And for this announcement today, terrific to be here for it, because we all know Australians love Aussie made products, and they love using recycled product too. And the ReMade in Australia logo is a terrific way to shine a powerful spotlight on this really incredible combo.
And so, from our point of view, being able to obviously back in the Australian Made campaign, working with Ben Lazzaro and the team there, and then seeing the natural evolution of this to ReMade in Australia as well, is important. It's important for Australians to know what products are Australian made, or in this case, recycled product that has got Australian content in it, recycled content in it. It's something that people will want to know. And in this time where there's a lot of global trade uncertainty, and where we do need to be making more of our own product, being able to get consumers to back in locally made product is essential, and these logos play a critical role in helping us show how we can make things here and we also ship them everywhere as well.
So from our point of view, the $20 million, we've made a $20 million investment in the Australian Made campaign through the Budget. On top of that, we've worked with investing $5 million in the Australia Made campaign to help support its export efforts as well, so that people in other countries can see great Australian made content. And today's announcement is a further critical investment as well, and I just want to congratulate Tanya for driving this.
This is part of a broader push that Tanya has made around the circular economy that is thinking early on, around the design of products, thinking early about recycling and reuse, being able to cut down on waste, and Tanya's work through the course of this term has been vital in starting to marshal together Australian business to think about how they can factor in recycling early on that it's not an afterthought, and that's taken a lot of great leadership by Tanya in the portfolio, convening the Circular Economy Advisory Group, being able to look at ways in which we can factor this policy going through, and today is further evidence of that leadership that Tanya has shown to be able to make sure that we've got these type of initiatives in place. And to talk further to the importance of the ReMade in Australia logo, just want to invite Ben Lazzaro, who heads up the Australian Made campaign initiative.
BEN LAZZARO, AUSTRALIAN MADE CAMPAIGN: Thank you, ministers and everyone at Australian Made is really excited to be involved in this wonderful initiative where we can't wait to welcome the ReMade in Australia certification trademark into the suite of Australia Made brands. We're all familiar with the Australian Made logo. It has 99 per cent recognition and 93 per cent trust in Australia. So we look forward to building those same attributes with the ReMade in Australia logo.
Consumers are telling us that sustainability is more and more important to them with their purchasing decisions, so the ReMade in Australia logo is going to provide that certainty to them that they're going to buy genuine Aussie products that have recycled content in them. And the initiative, more broadly, speaks to this Government's commitment, as Minister Husic just outlined, to Australia's manufacturing sector. It's important that we keep making things here. We do it well. We create some of the highest quality products, made to some of the highest standards in the world. We create jobs and we export them all over the world. So this initiative is fantastic, another offering that Australia Made can offer the many manufacturers in Australia, and we look forward to taking it from strength to strength.
PLIBERSEK: Thank you. Okay, any questions?
JOURNALIST: Minister, the Prime Minister said that you'll be a senior Cabinet Minister in the next government. Is there any, or is there another policy area that you'd like to lead in?
PLIBERSEK: Well, we don't take anything for granted. I don't take my own seat for granted. I'm campaigning hard in my seat of Sydney, and as a government, we are campaigning hard to make sure that people understand what's at risk at this election, if there were an election of a Dutton government.
I mean, we have worked hard over the last three years to make sure that people are earning more and keeping more of what they earn. We've seen the minimum wage increase by around $7,500 and we've seen tax cuts for every single Australian family. We've seen cheaper medicines, more free visits to the doctor, cheaper child care, fee free TAFE, proper funding for our schools, university debt relief. We've seen electricity bill relief, investment in housing to make it easier to afford a home to buy or rent. We've been working so hard to make sure that Australian families have a little bit of the pressure taken off them.
And of course, all of that is at risk with the election of a Dutton government, which has opposed all of our cost of living measures and is actually going to the election saying they're going to reverse our tax cuts. That's what we're focused on.
JOURNALIST: Sorry Minister, I'm asking you if, is there any other portfolio you'd like to work in? If you're not given back the environment?
PLIBERSEK: And I'm telling you we're focused right now on winning an election, which is a close contest. I'm not even guaranteed of winning my seat. I'm focused on, first of all, campaigning hard in my electorate to make sure that I'm returned as the Member for Sydney, and then I'm focused on being part of a government - going out to the Australian people and saying the Australian economy is turning a corner. We're seeing economic indicators improving all the time. We've gone from an economy where inflation is above six per cent to an economy with inflation at around 2.4 per cent. We've seen strong employment growth. We've seen the first of the interest rate cuts, we inherited an economy where interest rates were increasing, we've turned the corner on that. 100 per cent of our focus is on this election campaign. Unlike Peter Dutton, I'm not wandering around, measuring up the curtains for what I think comes next.
JOURNALIST: But if you start looking ahead. If you do get re-elected and form government, would you want to retain that portfolio?
PLIBERSEK: I'm very hopeful that we will be re-elected. That's our full focus now, and I would be grateful to serve in a Labor Cabinet. I would be grateful to serve in a Labor Cabinet.
JOURNALIST: So you've mentioned the successes of the Labor Government over the last three years, but in that list that yourself have mentioned and a number of other Cabinet MPs, there isn't necessarily a leading achievement from the environment sector. Are you at all concerned?
PLIBERSEK: Oh how wrong you are my friend. Let me just address that question.
JOURNALIST: Considering that environmental protection is worse off than it was when you started or at the same level as the Coalition. Is there at all any concern when you're trying to campaign on that?
PLIBERSEK: That is so 100 per cent wrong my friend. Since coming to government, in just three years, we've protected an extra 100 million hectares of Australian land and ocean. That is an area larger than Germany, Italy and Norway combined. Two years running, we've had the largest acts of ocean conservation anywhere in the world, when we tripled the size of Macquarie Island Marine Park and quadrupled the size of Heard and McDonald Island Marine Park. We've added an area the size of New Zealand to the land that we protect on the Australian mainland, and we've got 12 new Indigenous Protected Areas. Right here in these fantastic recycling facilities. We contributed to this, 1.3 million extra tonnes of recycling capacity because of what we have done as a government. We are changing recycling, moving to a circular economy because of the choices we have made as a government.
Since coming to government, in just the last three years, we've approved enough renewable energy to power every home in Australia, we've approved enough renewable energy to power over ten million homes since coming to government. We've added 15 gigawatts of renewable energy to the grid, that's more than three Snowy Hydros, and it's more renewable energy than Peter Dutton hopes to produce with his crazy nuclear plan, sometime in the 2040s, if it ever gets built. We've contributed more than half a billion dollars to protecting our threatened species, to tackling feral animals like cats and foxes, and getting rid of weeds. Across the board, we have made the most enormous changes in the environment portfolio.
No government has ever invested more in protecting Australia's environment, and just in the last Budget, we added $250 million that will help us achieve our target of protecting 30 per cent of Australia's land mass by 2030. We've already done that with oceans. So much has improved since we came to government. I am so proud of the record of the Albanese Labor Government when it comes to the environment.
JOURNALIST: Can you tell us when was the last time you had a one on one call with Anthony Albanese, and did you last discuss environmental plans?
PLIBERSEK: I spent last Tuesday with him in my own electorate, and I saw him on Sunday as well. The most recent phone message would have been me telling him what a great job he did with his speech on Sunday.
JOURNALIST: So what do you make of the media reaction to that awkward greeting you have with the Prime Minister?
PLIBERSEK: I think it shows how self absorbed the media are and how much they are in the Canberra bubble. When we are focused on the cost of living for Australian households, when we are out talking about Medicare, our investment in Urgent Care Clinics and women's health and cheaper medicines and more bulk billing, when we are talking about housing affordability and helping young Australians into a home of their own. That's what we are focused on. And you're all talking to each other about, you know, all this dumb stuff. I guarantee you, there is no one dropping the kids to school on a Wednesday morning going ‘oh, did you think?’ You know, seriously, people need to get a grip.
JOURNALIST: Broadly to the renewable energy debate. Of course, that's going to be a major policy moving forward for the Labor Government. And we know your thoughts on nuclear. In terms of the cultural divide and the issues with the cost of living so far, a lot of the regions are still quite hesitant to take it up. A lot of people accuse the decision making to be coming from inner city seats, you hold one yourself. How do you intend to overcome that sort of hurdle in the future?
PLIBERSEK: Well, I think in general, Australians are great fans of renewable energy, and the proof is in the pudding. Millions of Australian households have solar panels on the roof, because they've worked out it provides cheaper power, and now we are hoping that we'll get those domestic battery rates up as well. About one in three households has solar panels in the roof, but only about one in 40 has a battery. And by making it easier and more affordable to get a domestic battery, we're not just benefiting the environment, we're also helping people with cost of living.
When it comes to consultation on large scale renewables, I think our Energy Minister Chris Bowen is doing an excellent job here. He has taken what was quite a broken consultation system under the previous government and improved it dramatically by going out and talking to Australian communities about the local benefits, the jobs benefits that come from investment in renewables, and how we can make sure that these projects are being built in the most sustainable way. As I said earlier, since coming to government, we've approved more than 80 renewable energy projects. This change is real. It's happening right now. Thousands of people are employed in what is one of the biggest transformations of the Australian economy in our history. And I'm very proud of the fact that we are on track to meet our 82 per cent renewable energy goal.
JOURNALIST: Another one for yourself and maybe for Minister Husic. In terms of the ReMade in Australia announcement today. What is in like, I mean, when people are advocating for reduce, reuse, recycle, they often say that that's the order that it should be prioritised into the reduction of plastics, single use plastics. What is the Government doing on this?
PLIBERSEK: I'm sure Ed might want to add to this, but yes, reducing, reusing and recycling are all really important. That's the reason that we're working with the state and territory governments to reform packaging laws in Australia. We're looking at how we can increase recycled content in our packaging, how we can reduce the number of harmful additives in our packaging.
We know, for example, since coming to government we have banned or restricted the use of around 900 chemicals, particularly those PFAS-type forever chemicals. We want to get them out of our packaging. And we're working, so we're working on packaging law reform because about 70 per cent of the waste in a product is determined by its design. Once you've reduced the use of unnecessary plastics, the next stages are better collection, and we're working with states and territories and local government on improving curbside collection, making sure we're getting more of that material back. And then the next phase, of course, is the sort of recycling facilities that you see here, the sort of work that's being done to reclaim and reuse those materials. And then the final stage is creating demand for that recycled content, and that's the reason that the ReMade in Australia logo is so important. We know that Australians want to choose recycled content, by showing them in an easy way that this product is better than that product if you want to back recycled, we help them make that choice.
Can I say in addition, you're talking about reducing, reusing and so on - we have a world leading government sustainable procurement policy now that we've already applied to large infrastructure projects. From the first of July this year, it will apply to office fit outs, ICT, things like uniforms. As a purchaser ourselves, our Government is investing in buying more recycled content and more things that can be reused or recycled in the future, making more sustainable choices ourselves. We're a huge procurer. Minister Husic also mentioned earlier, our Circular Economy Framework. We've managed to include Circular Economy principles in so many areas of government investment, including Minister Husic's National Reconstruction Fund, so when we are making large choices about how to invest taxpayers’ money in critical projects and critical purchases we are thinking about how to choose the most sustainable ones. If you want to add something Ed?
HUSIC: I'm fine, unless you had another question?
JOURNALIST: Sure, let's throw another one in. There have been some suggestions that there are a few gaps in some of the major party policies that we've heard so far. I mean, we haven't heard necessarily heaps on AI policy moving forward. Are there at all any concerns around that? Can we expect anything from the Government?
HUSIC: Well we did go on the front foot early on, when we saw the biggest advances in generative AI with the release of Chat GPT’s version back in November of 2022. We opened up consultation around that. We had the National Science and Technology Council actually advise the Government on where things were likely to hit with generative AI, prompting us to open up the consultations on identifying those risks, but also the bigger, longer term thing is to encourage more Australian businesses in particular, to embrace the technology. And we know that smaller businesses are a bit standing away from using AI when there's a clear benefit for them in being able to get their job done. We worked with industry in developing voluntary guardrails and standards that could help them, one, identify the risks and be able to deal with them, and particularly for designers and developers the technology as well.
We've gone through that process of looking at where are the options, including, do we develop an Australian AI Act - that'll be something that we clearly, in terms of the legislative agenda that we had, weren't able to get that done in terms of this term, but it'll be stuff that has to be considered and prioritised in the next. Part of the challenge, though, is in the global environment, trying to get some, as close as you can, uniform agreement about where we head on that and to that point, I've said we'll harmonise where we can a global level, localise where we have to. That's certainly what we want to be able to do. Our agenda hasn't all been about regulation.
We do want to invest more in the development of AI in Australia. We've got a lot of smart people that are working in this space, and it's why we've started work on an AI capability plan. We're going to build one of the most powerful computers on the planet using Australian know how, through PsiQuantum, that we've done with the Australian and Queensland Governments investing there, that is attracting a lot of global interest and also activity coming our way. And on robotics and automation as well, another space where automation plays a big part in modern manufacturing, and we can't be an advanced manufacturing nation without modernised equipment. So we've developed in terms of the robotics and automation Australia, never happened in Australia before.
But the final piece I'll mention is that we're encouraging manufacturers to retool. A lot of their equipment is old. One of the announcements we made through the campaign was we dedicate a $1 billion fund out of the National Reconstruction Fund to help Australian manufacturers retool, get rid of their, in some cases, decades old equipment, and we will have easier to access low cost finance for them to be able to do it and get moving. Because picking up on Ben's point earlier, manufacturing matters. People want Australia to be a country that makes things. We particularly want to be an advanced manufacturing country. We can't do that off the back of old equipment, getting the mix right with AI, with quantum, with robotics, might sound far-fetched, but people know this is happening right now, and we cannot afford the country to be left behind.
JOURNALIST: Can I just ask you one more question? Can I just ask how much do you think the environment is a priority this election?
PLIBERSEK: I think the environment is always a priority for Australians. Australians love our natural environment. They love bush walking, they love surfing, they love fishing, they love camping, and they want to take their kids and their grandkids to the places they went to when they were kids, when they were camping by the river, and know that there are still those places in our natural environment, that we've still got koalas and platypus and all the animals that make us so unique. So I think the environment will always be an issue for Australians.
ENDS
