Speech
“The Gala and the Galahs”
State Library of Victoria
Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie
Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development
27 June 2025
Thank you, President Joshua Ahearn and the board members of Bulk Liquids Industry Association (BLIA) for inviting me to address your Gala Dinner here at the magnificent State Library of Victoria.
I also want to acknowledge Captain Noronha, CEO of Shipping Australia, Angela Gillham, CEO of Maritime Industry Australia and Phil Davis ex-captain of the GWS Giants.
Being in Opposition after an election shellacking like the Opposition received on May 3 has perhaps one upside.
You are gifted with the space to engage, think, read and plan for the ultimate day you, or your colleagues who come after you, gain the honour of being in government again.
As a Cabinet Minister serving in two different governments, I can attest you simply don’t have that luxury, the demands on your time simply do not permit it.
Occasionally, from Opposition you can and do develop policies which are so compelling and so clearly necessary that the Government is forced to act.
That happened for me with aviation policy in the first Albanese Government.
So, this why it is important to attend events like this and meeting with industry organisations like yours which have such a pivotal presence in our trade economy, in our supply chains, in our geo-strategic position with the world, and our national economy more broadly.
Following the election the Coalition parties have dusted ourselves off, and, following some tough negotiations to secure policies important to the future of regional Australia, we have come together with a fresh Shadow Ministry and a determination to be a strong Coalition in Opposition under David Littleproud and Sussan Ley.
When Josh asked me to speak tonight the brief was, what has happened since the re-election of the Albanese Government?
I can answer that in two words: not much. The Prime Minister has scheduled only eight sitting weeks this year and a round table on productivity.
Well, after three years of inactivity, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, is going to get to prove whether he is an actual reformer or just a violinist. And I think he will be a virtuoso fidler.
It is one thing writing a university thesis on Paul Keating, And it’s quite another to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of actually managing the economy.
And the fact that the first substantial act of the second term of the Albanese Government is to hold a roundtable on productivity is not a great a sign. Particularly as his own Productivity Commission handed him nine volumes on how to get our economy moving in March 2023 and that’s just sat on his desk.
This just says the work wasn’t done in the first term.
The fact that it’s going to be held in the Cabinet room, the room that can comfortably seat just 30 around people, raises concerns as to how deep the productivity focus will be.
Now, I’ve been talking to people that operate on ports, I have been talking to transport industry here tonight, and I had ATA in my office in Canberra yesterday – the trucking industry. I don’t understand who this guy is inviting to this productivity roundtable.
We’ve got a room full of industry representatives tonight, including some of the most capable and strategic minds in our economy, that’s you. People who understand how to keep our supply chains functioning, our energy systems operating, and our industrial base globally competitive. This is what you guys and girls do every day of your working life.
But has anyone at this dinner been invited to the roundtable in Canberra? Shipping Australia? MIAL? Port of Melbourne?
So, that to me, having been a senior Cabinet Minister, lets you know how deep the engagement is going to be and what are the potential solutions.
So, what’s Labor’s record been to date on productivity: higher taxes disguised as tax reform, such as the superannuation changes, and minor tinkering to address bracket creep exacerbated by Labor’s ‘homegrown’ inflation.
Increasing the overall tax take will cruel productivity, not grow it. And you don’t need an economics degree to know that. Massive increase in a government-funded economy and 36,000 additional public servants. The public sector growing in employment, the private sector employment shrinking. That is not how you grow an economy in the long term. You don’t need to be Adam Smith to know that.
Five thousand new regulations coming from government, including 646 new in my own Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sports and the Arts.
Workplace relations are certainly going to be a no-go place. If you wanted to address productivity in this country let’s talk about IR. Can we talk about IR? And you know it more than most. You’re dealing with the TWU [Transport Workers Union], you’re dealing with the MUA [Maritime Union of Australia] each and every day. And there was a reason that the hard men, and they were men back then, thankfully there is women involved as well, but back then had to take to the laws, a few decades ago, it was to get our country moving and make it more efficient and productive and grow our economy.
So, Labor’s whole take of let’s go back to our glory of the 1970s.
Well, let’s look at our productivity and our living standards back then not what we’ve been able to grow as a country over subsequent decades as we have de-regulated. And the Labor Party did a lot of that heavy lifting through the eighties. We’ve got to be thankful to Keating and Hawke for that hard work.
But it seems we’re now regressing back and there will be an impact. It is why Australians right now in the suburbs not too far from here, their real wage is going backwards. The data is saying that there feeling poorer because they actually are.
But the Labor Party keeps saying, real wages growing. But so are costs. And you guys know the most, because you have to keep passing it on.
Now, I was asked to talk about CBAMs. And we are also watching, I guess, the Government closely in its flirtation with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms. The European Union has already implemented the scheme. And I know the Trade Minister, Don Farrell, is looking forward to doing a free trade agreement with the EU. And we need to really watch that relationship quite closely because we have to protect bulk liquid imports that are critical to our food production, mining, construction and manufacturing.
Where there are no viable domestic substitutes, penalising these imports risks raising costs, constraining industry operations and weakening our own global competitiveness.
When you think about the roads that you are getting things off port, out to market or bringing it to port to get to the markets of the globe, the cost of building and upgrading roads here in Australia is higher than Germany and the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada.
The Commonwealth funds roads and infrastructure but we rely on states and territories to build them. We don’t own any bulldozers. And unfortunately states and territories have proven to be very poor project managers shall we say.
With cost blowouts as far as the eye can see, and no consequences in that contractual relationship between the Commonwealth taxpayer and the state or territory taxpayer or Minister building them.
So, part of what we announced at the last election was that we are no longer going to be, as a Coalition, a passive investor on behalf of the Commonwealth taxpayers. If the states can’t manage their projects properly their going to have to fund the overruns, not come begging to the Commonwealth taxpayer for that. That will instil some discipline on their project management.
We are not going to allow publicly funded infrastructure to be held hostage to militant construction unions and hence pay an additional 30 per cent price tag as a result. So, we won’t be turning a blind eye my time as others have.
Now, I know there is different views in this room as to the strategic fleet policy, and it has been great to chat with so many prior to dinner about that, and I’m sure that discussion will continue.
Labor is pitching this as a solution to their own failed coastal shipping policy, but they’re refusing to say how much it will cost.
Now, we know in many cases, the Coastal Trading Act has seen the number of Australian-flagged vessels operating in domestic freight task drop. That’s been the legitimate outcome of that legislation, down from more than a hundred just a few decades, to a handful.
In many cases, the more cost-effective transport is by road, by international trans-shipment than to use Australian-flagged ships, which is insane. It’s legitimately crazy that we have to ship it somewhere else and then ship it back, and that it’s going to be cheaper than using our own industry.
Now, having regulated the industry into retreat, Labor is proposing a taxpayer-backed fleet to replace what its own legislation helped dismantle.
I have called this ‘Albo’s Armada’ in other speeches and will retain that moniker. Because it’s seriously about supporting the MUA. That at the end of the day is what this policy seems to be about. It wants to nationalise the aviation sector and nationalise the shipping sector.
Again, taking us back to a bygone era when our economy was shackled by regulation. Government owned solution to a government created problem.
We have to have maritime resilience. We are an island nation in very difficult and challenging geopolitical environment. But we need to ensure that it’s a cost we are conscious of and are prepared to pay.
A serious maritime strategy must also focus on port-side investment. And we know that the long term productivity of bulk liquid movement depends not just on vessels but on terminals, on berths, on pipeline access, on road and rail connectivity, and energy storage.
Storage is an important issue, and not just strategic because of our vulnerable island status, but also to counter price shocks globally.
Australia must make better use of Infrastructure Australia’s Priority List and prioritise productivity-enhancing projects that benefit both industry and the broader community.
The Albanese Government needs to fast-track regional port projects that reduce congestion, improve capacity, and attract private capital.
We need to reduce bottlenecks, remove unnecessary federal overlap, and return certainty to investors who want to get on with the job of building better infrastructure.
From Geelong to Gladstone, from Kwinana to the Port of Newcastle, it is the regional ports that really drive productivity from paddock to port, sorry Saul. And increasingly, from port to processing, to industrial users, and energy consumers.
Our ports support thousands and thousands of jobs. And if you went down Collins Street or on Swanton Street tonight, Australians have no idea how important ports are to every single thing they do and touch and consume – have no idea.
And how when that’s an anti-competitive space, the flow-on impact on price.
As we meet tonight the world is rapidly becoming more unpredictable and more dangerous.
We have just seen, hopefully, the end of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran. But that has seen a rise in global anxiety, particularly around energy security and trade stability.
We need to actually address those maritime checkpoints because we sit at that the end of a very fragile global supply chain. People have to want to come here and we’re not a big market and you all know that.
The strategic risk to fuel imports, chemicals feedstocks, industrial gases and maritime logistics is not just theoretical, it’s already being felt in cost volatility, insurance premiums and freight availability
In such a context, the importance of a resilient, responsive and well-integrated bulk liquids supply chain becomes even more urgent.
The businesses represented in this room aren’t just moving high-value liquid categories, they are upholding our nation’s ability to grow clean green food, not just for ourselves but for the world, we export 80% of it, to respond to emergencies, not just here but across our region, particularly, in the Pacific, and to support domestic manufacturing, and to trade with the world.
The Coalition is a strong supporter of our transport industries and the importance of our maritime strategic supply chains.
I want to thank you for your engagement, thank you for your invitation, and wish you all the best.