QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:25): The framework sees that critical minerals and rare earths will not just be mined here in Australia but processed here in Australia. That means we capture more of the value of final product here, and it delivers far more jobs than just mining alone in places like the Nyrstar Port Pirie antimony smelter, which the Albanese Labor government intervened to support just this August.

Because we protected that lead-smelting capacity, this asset—the new antimony asset—was available to bolster our contribution to the agreement with the United States. Metals-processing jobs are good blue-collar jobs in regional industrial centres and outer suburbs. They are the jobs that families can build a life around.

They are the kinds of jobs that support entire communities and they are jobs that are in the national interest and in the interest of our economic resilience. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Sterle, second supplementary?