Made in WA plan
217. Mr Yaz Mubarakaito theMinister for Manufacturing:
I refer to the Cook Labor government's commitment to building WA's local manufacturing capacity to support our clean energy transition.
(1) Can the minister update the house on what action this government is taking to support local manufacturing?
(2) Can the minister advise the house how this government is delivering on its Made in WA commitment to deliver transmission infrastructure here?
Ms Amber-Jade Sanderson replied:
(1)–(2) Thank you, Mr Speaker. I know this is particularly relevant to you in your role as the local member for Forrestfield. As the Premier outlined, the Premier, Deputy Premier and I were in Forrestfield today announcing that this budget will deliver a tranche of funding to support our Made in WA agenda. We are going to require thousands of kilometres of transmission lines and components to connect new renewable energy generation and battery storage, and to connect industry across the state to that generation and storage. This is not just an infrastructure challenge; it is also an industrial opportunity for Western Australia. Importantly, it will also be an investment in our own supply chain resilience and sovereign capacity to deliver a number of these components and pieces of infrastructure. We are in global competition for many of these components and we need to be scaling up now and have a vision for decades to come for the future of Western Australian jobs.
We know that delivering our transmission Made in WA election commitment is going to transition many of the jobs in the South West, particularly those jobs that rely on coal and Collie, and the advanced manufacturing and technology hub, or AMTECH, is going to be an important part of that. Western Power will be an anchor tenant. This $5 million from the Strategic Industries Fund will start to provide the services into that site that has now been selected in Picton. It will be connected to rail and port infrastructure, and it is of course close to a number of those large renewable projects. We are investing $10 million to help establish a manufacturing facility in Forrestfield, working with local steel fabricators and manufacturers to produce those components, and that $5 million for AMTECH, to scale up and deliver that advanced manufacturing facility. There is also $10 million in this budget for a new local industry development fund to help Western Power maximise its local content and production. It already has significant local content from working with local manufacturers, but the scale of what it will need to deliver just to build out of the South West Interconnected System means that there is opportunity for businesses in Western Australia that have already benefited significantly from the Deputy Premier; Minister for Transport's leading work on building our manufacturing capacity around transport. They are the same companies that can quickly pivot into building electricity infrastructure.
This budget is a commitment to an investment in our future. It is a commitment to invest in local jobs and it is a commitment to invest in the local communities that rely on those local jobs.
