Opening remarks, Ministry Meeting - Adelaide

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Ok, well thanks everyone for joining us here for this ministerial meeting in Adelaide. We've met, of course, right around the country, and here in South Australia, of course, there's nowhere better for us to meet where we have delivered, whether it's Urgent Care Clinics, the public school funding for each and every school, renewables including the Batteries Program, the support for jobs and manufacturing here in South Australia. Whyalla, without our intervention with the Malinauskas Government, simply wouldn't have been able to continue. And of course, the work that we're doing here with AUKUS, is creating advanced manufacturing jobs and we're skilling up the workforce as well here, with Free TAFE the way that here the school program has also been designed very well here with the equivalent of the old technical schools, making sure that people are getting the skills that they need to fulfil these jobs.

We're bringing the National Conference here to Adelaide over the next 3 days. It's an opportunity for our party members to have a direct say in the direction of the country and for us to engage. We represent the oldest and greatest political party in Australia. This is our 50th National Conference. Whilst other political parties have come and gone, we've continued to evolve, develop, we change with the times, and the party conference will reflect that over the coming few days in developing our platform that we'll continue to take forward.

It's also an opportunity for us to reflect on the work that we've done to keep the economy and employment growing, with 1.2 million jobs being created. The work that we've done as well to promote gender equality, with the gender pay gap being at a record low. The work that we're doing in international affairs as well, that has been significant, particularly over the recent period with the agreement, since parliament got up, of the alliance with Fiji, we have brought now more alliances or the same number of alliances, two in the last 12 months with Papua New Guinea coming into effect, as well as the alliance with Fiji. We had two alliances in Australia's first 125 years, and we've had two in the last year, and the work that we've done in the Pacific Island Forum, with ASEAN, working our way through as well immediate challenges such as the conflict in the Middle East. We, on Saturday, I gave the update and we now have more fuel security than we've had at any time, and certainly more fuel in all three categories of jet fuel, diesel and petrol than we had on February 28 when the conflict in the Middle East began, which is an extraordinary effort and an example of us working with the private sector.

So, we've still got other challenges of course, the bird flu challenge is something that we deal with, but we deal with immediate challenges, but always with our eye on the horizon, of no matter how turbulent the times are that we're dealing with globally and we do deal with uncertain times. But I think all the delegates gathering here in Adelaide will know that they can be certain that our focus is on the national interests as we go forward and really look forward to today's Ministerial Meeting, of course. But over the coming few days, the National Conference will be a real opportunity to showcase as well, the work that we're doing, much of it in partnership with the Malinauskas Government here in South Australia.