ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, welcome, everybody. It's great to be here with the Victorian Treasurer, with my colleagues, Keith Pitt and Tim Wilson, and our Japanese partners, the industry consortium involved. This is a historic day. This is the beginning of an industry that will shape the future of global energy. That will be in keeping with the incredible success Australia has had in building resource and agricultural energy sectors and supply chains over a long period of time. We're doing exactly the same right here with hydrogen. Clean hydrogen is an extraordinary global opportunity. This is the first global shipment of liquid hydrogen in the world, and it will be the first of many from Australia to Japan and elsewhere in the world. It's wonderful to see the relationship with Japan, which has been so instrumental in the development of so many industries, export industries for Australia over such a long period of time, being the centrepiece of this again here today. It's a partnership between Industry, Victorian Government and Commonwealth Government, which shows what government can do to not just bring down our own emissions and create new industries and jobs in the process, but bring down global emissions at exactly the same time. It's great to be here and I look forward to the presentations and speeches a little later on.

TIM PALLAS: Well, I'll just jump up, I suppose. Look, first of all, I want to thank our Japanese partners. I want to thank the Federal Government for the consistent and continuing support of this project. This is vitally important for the future of the world's energy needs. It's also a demonstration of what can be achieved through effort, endeavour and cooperation. And as I said to his excellent to the ambassador, this project could not conceivably have been done without the consistent support and engagement of Japanese industry. And, of course, the Japanese Government. And I want to thank them very much for their continuing support to the people of Hastings and in the Latrobe Valley, who have made such an enormous effort in being able to facilitate this great day. And I'm sure there are many more great days to come, because the things we do together really do define the quality of the activity. And this is a vitally important undertaking. It's one that I'm proud to be part of, one that the Victorian Government is proud to support, and one that we're proud of the partnerships that we've been able to forge. And of course, these partnerships will need to service well into the future. You can be assured that the Victorian government will be a robust partner going forward. Thank you.

KEITH PITT: And just a couple of brief comments. Keith Pitt, Federal Member for Hinkler and Minister for Resources and Water. I acknowledge this is a wonderful day not only for the people of Melbourne, but also the people of the Latrobe Valley. My colleague Darren Chester, the member for Gippsland, is an apology today, but he knows that this is an opportunity for the people that he represents. It also reflects very strongly Australia's resources sector and its contribution not only to the Australian economy but ensuring the lights stay on with our partner countries such as Japan, with our very large trading partners. It is such an important partnership. When the pandemic broke out in the March quarter, the forecast of the Australian resources sector dropped to $246 billion. Instead, they set new records and in this financial year, they are expected to deliver $379 billion to the Australian economy and that is because the hard working men and women of the sector have done what was necessary. They've maintained their businesses, they've kept operational, and more importantly, we are able to maintain our logistics and supply chains with our very important trading partners like Japan. So what we see here today is new leaps forward in terms of technology, new leaps forward in terms of opportunities for Australia in partnership with countries like Japan, an incredibly important trading partner, but in a partner in a wide variety of fields. So I'm very pleased to be here to see the results of this very hard work. And I look forward to those opportunities for Australia's resources sector to continue to, not only to grow, but to contribute to things like this, where we are exporting hydrogen to the world, along with LNG, along with coal, along with gold, along with critical minerals and as that demand increases, Australia will look to fill it. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, tell us behind you. We've got what is quite a small scale pilot. What is the size of the potential opportunity for Australia and how can the government help your partners overcome what remains very challenging economics for liquefied hydrogen exports?

ANGUS TAYLOR: Yeah, the opportunity is enormous. Alan Finkel, who is here today, when he did the National Hydrogen Strategy, along with the Commonwealth Government and state governments, made the point that there were at least 16,000 jobs up for grabs, very significant exports and export income for Australia. It won't just be in the form of hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, it will also be in the form of ammonia. It can come from many different sources. As with all industries, we've got to deploy all the technologies available to get to the outcomes but I've seen the extraordinary impact of the iron ore industry, the coal industry, the LNG industry, agricultural industries on the economy of this great country, and hydrogen can be exactly the same. This is a great opportunity. Partnering with Japan is a great tradition with these industries, and that opportunity is one we'll realise together. It's incredibly exciting to be here today. This is also technology in action. Technology, not taxes, is what you see behind you. This is the government working with industry to deploy technologies to bring down emissions, not just in Australia, but globally. Remembering bringing down emissions is a global challenge, and we have to work through it with our global partners as we are with Japan.

JOURNALIST: Part of that technology is carbon capture storage is heavily dependent on the CarbonNet project. How do we know this won’t become the latest in a long line of fantasy coal process in Latrobe Valley.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well it's happening. We're doing it there's the shipment. There's no fantasy in a ship leaving a port going to Japan to provide a product to customers and Australia has a long track record of doing this extremely well. We pioneer these industries and in pioneering them we provide our customers with a new product which is good for them and it's good for us and that's what global trade is about. That's how we build these industries and that's exactly how we're building this industry already right behind us.

JOURNALIST: Financing is one thing, commercialising another. How certainly be that this will lead to those jobs?

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, we're making the investments and industries making the investments. You've got to remember here this is government is playing a role. An important role. Victorian government. Commonwealth government partnering together on it. But industry is involved and that's what we like to see. The great successes in Australia's history in building these export industries have always involved industry and we know when industry is involved it means it's real and that's exactly what's happening here.

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