Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. In part of the question he does raise a very serious issue. I understand that there are many manufacturing businesses in our nation today that are bearing the burden of a high Australian dollar. Indeed, so focused am I on that question that this morning I attended a manufacturing roundtable to talk about the pressures on manufacturing that are coming from the economic circumstances that we are in now, as we are in days of economic transformation. We know that in our economy that has a tremendous upside, which is the incredible growth we are seeing in the resources sector, with all of the opportunities that come with that—for jobs, for inward investment—this is a remarkable age for us in resources.

But one of the consequences of that is that the Australian dollar is high, and it is predicted to remain high for a very long period of time. So the bus builder that the member is referring to in his electorate is someone who is bearing the pressure of that high Australian dollar. This is what we refer to in my parlance as the 'patchwork economy', and every step of the way we want to be engaged with manufacturing to make sure that it has a strong future. That is why we have done things like skills reform. That is what the minerals resource rent tax is all about.

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