Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

The manufacturing sector is critical to Australia. One million Australians work in this sector. It may interest the member who has just spoken to know that during the time of this Labor government 550 jobs a week are lost in manufacturing. I will repeat that so that he adds it to his little notebook: 550 jobs a week are lost by this government. Who has cut $1.8 billion from industry assistance? That would be his minister, Minister Carr, who thankfully resides in the other place. So let us not get too hypocritical about this issue, because all you need to do is not listen to the coalition if you do not want to but listen to industry? Why don't you listen to industry when it says that a carbon tax is, as Paul O'Malley from BlueScope Steel said:

… clearly economic vandalism. It clearly says we don't want manufacturing in Australia.

We hear that carbon pricing could be the straw that breaks the camel's back as far as some industries are concerned. 'If one job is gone our support is gone.' That quote is not actually from industry; it is from Paul Howes. Of course he was pushed into a corner by the most powerful branch of his union and he was forced to stand up for them. He said that—one of the faceless men who put the Prime Minister in her job. But apparently he does not even get to have a say in this. Bob Brown is even more important than him.

We also hear what will happen if we act unilaterally—we will just export our industries and export our jobs. It was Graham Kraehe, Chairman of BlueScope Steel, who said:

… a tax on carbon produced in steelmaking is fine as long as the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Russians, Americans, Brazilians and others have a similar tax.

If this is not the case Australia will simply transfer the carbon generation to countries without a carbon tax and accelerate the hollowing out of Australia's economy.

They are not alarmist words; they just state the fact. They state exactly the fact and what has happened in other nations. The business sector wants this Prime Minister to stop trying to club manufacturing out of existence. The workers who work in this sector want the Prime Minister to stop seeking to punish them, to stop trying to label the very successful and innovative businesses in which they work as environmental vandals. We do not want to see these industries legislated out of existence; nor do these businesses that are filled with decent, hardworking Australians, that have invested in this nation, that are fighting for their life at the moment, want to see jobs go in Australia. What a contrast that is to the vainglorious politicians and the celebrities who lecture everyone else about how they should lead their lives, who lecture everyone else about the sorts of things they can afford and what they should do to save the planet. It is because of this arrogance and this inability to listen to ordinary Australians that the Prime Minister has now allowed herself to be cornered by that fringe dweller Bob Brown, who is going to inherit even more extremists come 1 July. She has allowed this once great party representing the workers to now be the author of and the signatory to the bill that will destroy manufacturing and alter the face of this economy.

We heard from the other side, typically, all those arrogant statements: 'The coalition does not understand manufacturing' and the like. Actually, both my parents spent 20 years working in manufacturing in the industrial suburbs of Melbourne, so I fully do appreciate and understand the importance of manufacturing today in employing one million Australians and the important heritage that manufacturing has had in building innovation capability, in building up our manufacturing capability and in allowing particularly SMEs to grow and flourish. On this side of the House we understand that. We understand you cannot have a modern economy without steel, cement, plastics, aluminium and glass. We on this side of the House do not want to see the food-processing industry further contract, because we believe it is important for Australia as a nation not only to make things but to process our own food.

Manufacturing is doing it tough with the rising value of the Australian dollar and ever-increasing competition, but on the government benches they are gripped with this blind desire, this false bravado, and think that if they just crash through with Bob Brown's carbon tax they will somehow get over the line at the next election—and for what? To save one person's job: the Prime Minister's. The government have not actually done the hard work. There is no industry policy coming from them and the Prime Minister has barely been to a manufacturing business in months. Behind lecterns in Parliament House, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research is reduced to reciting gibberish about how manufacturing assistance is going to increase under a punitive carbon tax and, at the same time, firms will also be partly compensated for the damage they suffer. He let out of the bag the other night during estimates that industry was going to get 46 per cent of overall compensation. He did not have the guts to detail that. He did not have the guts to tell a lot of manufacturers that they were not going to get a cent, though I suppose he has been adequately chastised for that. He did not tell the Australian people that there will be no compensation for losing their jobs, but I suppose this attitude should not come as a surprise from a bloke who once admitted on live radio that 'no-one's job is safe under this government'. That is about the only thing I agree with him on.

Then we have the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, former union boss and prime ministerial wannabe, who was so chastened by being jeered about his carbon tax by Port Kembla workers that he is now trying to forget that he was even there, which, of course, is probably not a difficult thing to do when you reside in a multimillion dollar mansion by the sea—the same sea that, if you believe some of his spin, is supposed to be about to engulf people who allegedly are still silly enough to live in coastal areas.

Of course, the implementation of a carbon tax would be bad enough if the situation were not so dire in the first place. Under Labor we have seen 550 manufacturing jobs disappear every week. That is a figure that we should all remember: 550 manufacturing jobs disappear every week. Around one in every 12 manufacturing workers across Australia have lost their jobs since Labor came to power. But Labor are not happy with that figure; they want to accelerate it even further. So much for the former Prime Minister's 'working families' of the 2007 election. They now want to create 'unemployed families'.

Not only do they want to pummel manufacturing with a carbon tax; the Prime Minister in her arrogance is so out of touch that when she is asked, 'How will manufacturing survive?' she says, 'Oh well, they'll innovate; they'll keep up.' I suppose she just wants them, like lobotomised zombies, to say, 'Yes, we'll go along with this.' All she has to do is go out and speak to those union members who work in manufacturing. Why doesn't she have the guts to go from one end of the country to the other and speak to those businesses? Do not believe the coalition; believe those workers that you say you represent—while in your arrogance, in your ivory tower, you are so aligned to the Greens.

You have no idea, Prime Minister, what it is to have a modern economy. You have no idea how difficult it is for these families to survive. Not only do you want to increase their cost of living but you want to rip their jobs away from them. The Labor Party's idea is: if an industry is successful, punish it. If an industry does not toe the line, demonise and vilify it. If an industry would benefit from any serious policy reform, just shrug your shoulders and let it die.

The coalition will never shirk the serious responsibilities of reform and looking after important industries in this nation because we understand you cannot have a serious economy without a viable manufacturing sector. We will stand up and we will defend these manufacturing jobs against an ill-conceived carbon tax that will do nothing but increase emissions and export Australian jobs overseas. (Time expired)

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