William Hazlitt, the English essayist and critic, once wrote:
 
“Prosperity is a great teacher, adversity a greater.’’
 
Over the past two years, adversity has been a constant feature of life in tourism, aviation and transport.
 
COVID has smashed your businesses.
 
Entire industries virtually closed overnight: international aviation and tourism; the cruise ship industry.
 
And while the domestic industry pushed on, Scott Morrison’s failure to buy enough COVID vaccines early enough prolonged your suffering by keeping borders closed just as they were reopening overseas.
 
But even now, as you battle labour shortages and ongoing uncertainty, your industry is rebuilding and setting new goals.
 
Your courage and resilience are clear from the theme of this conference: ‘A new paradigm: reimagining Australia’s future’.
 
That’s resolve. That’s the Australian Way. The actual Australian Way.
 
My message today is that Australia deserves a federal government that shares your ambition.
 
Australia needs leaders who look at the changes on our horizon as opportunities to shape a better future, not as a reason to try to turn back time.
 
Change is always challenging. But good governments shape change to the nation’s benefit.
 
This morning I want to talk to you about how I think we can shape a better future for this country.
 
We must do a lot more than simply restoring Australia and its economy to the way it looked before the pandemic.
 
Before the pandemic, economic growth was sluggish, wages growth was glacial, business investment was flat and government debt had doubled from its level when the Coalition took office.
 
I know Australia can aspire to more than that. We need a better plan for the great Australian comeback. We need to Build Back Stronger.
 
As I travel around the nation, business owners and tourism operators tell me again and again about how hard it is to find skilled workers.
 
I know that is a concern of many here today.
 
Tourism and transport operators are telling me the lack of workers is limiting their ability to recover from the impact of the pandemic.
 
We need to revive skills training in this nation.
 
Labor will rebuild our training system with public TAFE at its heart. And we will establish Jobs and Skills Australia to work with employers and the training sector to ensure we are teaching the right skills for the 21st century.
 
We need a training system that responds to changing needs.
 
As an employer, the Australian Government must practice what it preaches.
 
We’ll make sure that when we spend money on new roads or train lines, one out of every ten workers on-site will be an apprentice or trainee.
 
Investing in education and training is not only about a benefit for individuals.
 
It enriches the entire nation, lifting our skills base and empowering industry to grow.
 

A Future Made in Australia 

And growth is key to our future – a future made here in Australia.
 
A future where our transport sector, the steady foundation of functioning economy, is thriving. And where tourism, the lifeblood of so many of our communities, is roaring back.
 
Your twin industries are deeply enmeshed in Australian life, in the very imagery that springs to mind when we think of who we are as a country.
 
From outback roads to blue-green seas, this great nation of travellers and explorers relies on you.
 
Those of you in the aviation and transport sectors know this only too well. Despite being hard hit by the pandemic you helped as many people as you could home to their families and kept freight moving.
 
It is the job of good government to create economic conditions where tourism, aviation and transport can grow, innovate and evolve.
 
We want to see your sectors build back stronger from the pandemic. A government I lead will engage constructively with all parts of the industry to deliver a genuine plan for the transport sector so it cannot only recover, but thrive and take advantage of new opportunities.
 
Australian tourism and transport stand to gain much from the global transition to a low-emissions economy.
 
I am eager to work with the private sector and other levels of government to build Australian capacity in the new growth industries of the future like green hydrogen, green steel, batteries, and low-emissions technologies.
 
We must restore our self-sufficiency, reigniting Australian production of medicines and vaccines, defence equipment and heavy manufacturing for the transport sector.
 
Australia needs to be a nation that makes things.

To drive this ambition we must capitalise on Australia’s abundant natural resources and become a renewable energy superpower – lowering energy costs for businesses and households alike as we bring down our emissions.
 
Rebuilding our electricity transmission system so it can utilise new forms of energy will be the key to unlocking our renewable energy potential.
 
Labor’s Rewiring the Nation initiative will invest $20 billion to upgrade the grid to integrate renewable energy projects that are coming online across the nation.
 
Australia’s embrace of renewables will be further underpinned with our $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund.
 
This fund will provide subsidised loans, equity and guarantees to businesses in existing and emerging industries.
 
For example, right now we export lithium and copper to the world – the key ingredients in batteries that are powering the next generation of vehicles and storing the electricity generated by the sun and wind.
 
We should be building a homegrown battery industry to create Australian jobs and boost our exports.
 
These are the types of enterprises that will qualify for support from our National Reconstruction Fund.
 
Its work will increase Australia’s resilience because when we create new industries we also broaden and diversify our economic base.
 
We should further support local industry by utilising the power of government purchasing to boost local content with our Buy Australian Plan.
 
Take trains. Australia has perfectly good heavy engineering facilities that can produce trains. But we are buying trains on the cheap from overseas suppliers.
 
And we’ve seen too many times that when they arrive, they don’t fit the bill.
 
We end up calling on Australian talents to fix trains or ferries that were botched by an overseas company.
 
Do it once, do it right, has always been my motto.
 
We can build trains, trams and ferries here, providing jobs and economic activity in parts of Australia that are crying out for them.
 
Likewise, when we spend money on big road or rail projects, we should be engaging local contractors instead of just giving the work to the big multinationals.
 
Of course, A Future Made in Australia must be underpinned by modern communications.
 
Last week I outlined my plan to turbo charge business growth by fixing our second-rate, copper-based National Broadband Network, bringing fibre connections to an extra 1.5 million homes and businesses by 2025.
 
This stands to benefit thousands of small and medium sized tourism businesses that need access to the faster speeds that only fibre can deliver.
 
It is also important for international tourists who expect connectivity as a part of modern travel.
 
Australia should be leading the world on things like broadband and renewables.

We must act on climate change. Embracing a low-emissions future is an opportunity to create new jobs.
 
Of course, action on climate change is great news for tourism.
 
Australia’s biggest tourism selling point is our environment. Many tourism businesses are built entirely around showcasing the wonder of our natural environment.  But climate change is degrading our best asset.
 
You need a government willing to do the work to conserve our natural environment.
 
Labor will make our rivers, beaches and parks healthy and pollution-free. And will protect our native species.

Tourism

Let me turn more directly to the needs of the tourism sector.
 
I had the great honour of being shadow minister for tourism prior to my current job. So, I start with a thorough understanding of your industry.
 
Prior to the pandemic, it supported one million jobs.
 
It deserves strong support from government.
 
This is the government that forgot to appoint a tourism minister in its first ministry.
 
And during the pandemic, they provided patchy support, picked winners and failing many tourism operators.
 
First, the Morrison government overlooked the sector completely. Then it disregarded the impact of seasonality for tourism businesses when developing JobKeeper, which forced some operators to lay off staff.
 
I know that your biggest concern at present is labour shortages, a problem made critical by the border closures and the halt in the intake of backpackers and skilled visa holders.
 
And while backpackers and skilled visa holders will be welcome once again from next week onwards, the fact is businesses won’t just scale up overnight.
 
But let’s be very clear about the main reason why tourism has borne such a heavy burden this last year: the bungling of vaccines and quarantine.
 
If Scott Morrison had actually put Australia at the front of the queue – if he had realized, as every other government did early on, that getting people vaccinated was in fact a race – Australia could have had vaccines months earlier.
 
Now that we finally have a steady vaccine supply, it’s been fantastic to watch Australians roll up their sleeves and get it done.
 
Australians were always willing to do the right thing. We’ve seen it time and again over these past two years - that quintessential Australian resolve to take care of each other.
 
We were ready and able. But our government failed us.
 
And every person here knows what that has meant – lockdowns and border closures that should have been avoided, but have taken an enormous toll on your industries.
 
Getting tourism roaring again will require a focus on jobs, making sure we can skill up Australians and ensuring there is a strong supply of labour to meet the challenges you face.
 
Labor has a plan for this.
 
One of the first acts of a Labor Government will be to convene an Australian Jobs Summit, which will complement the Full Employment White Paper.
 
I want to hear what employers need to better meet their labour needs and also how we can ensure Australians can get good, secure jobs that turn into fulfilling careers.
 
The advice of the Tourism and Transport Forum will be critical.
 
Beyond the immediate post-COVID challenges, I want to work with you to improve training and career development in your sector.
 
You will always rely on casual and seasonal workers. That’s the nature of your business. But a job in tourism can also be a fulfilling career.
 
A Labor government will work alongside you to ensure a steady stream of well-trained Australians have the skills and knowledge needed to choose that career.
 
Because COVID froze international travel, Australian travellers have rediscovered their own nation.
 
We must work to sustain this love affair.
 
Australia is essentially a long-haul destination and as COVID spikes continue internationally, our short-term focus must be encouraging Australians to travel domestically.
 
The last thing we want is for Australians to take their travel dollars overseas before we have welcomed international tourists back.

Working Together

Those of you aware of my background as Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister know that I am a builder.
 
I like to build capacity and think ahead.
 
I also like to collaborate.
 
A hallmark of a government under my leadership will be collaboration. Listening, talking, working together.
 
Scott Morrison seems to prefer conflict to progress and I think Australians have had enough of that approach.
 
I’m not interested in culture wars, marketing tricks or political posturing.
 
I’m interested in outcomes - concrete outcomes that will make real practical differences to the way Australians experience their lives.
 

Conclusion 

As we take stock of the last two years and start casting our eyes to the future, it’s clear that the coming decades offer huge opportunities for Australia.
 
Next year’s election will be about which side of politics has the plan to seize those opportunities and lay the foundations for lasting national prosperity.
 
Labor has real plans that will deliver real results and you will hear more about them in coming months.
 
Finally, I wish you well as you fight back from the pandemic.
 
Your resolve and optimism remind me of the words of Confucius, who once said: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
 
Your industry has faced great adversity. Circumstances have pushed you down, but you are rising fast.
 
I look forward to working with you to lend a helping hand.