Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know. That is why I said I would not do it. The minister said:

These grants will help automotive firms remain viable by diversifying into non-automotive markets and ensure that vital manufacturing capabilities remain in Australia.

The projects to be funded include: manufacturing cycling training simulators; casting metal components for the aerospace and defence industries; transforming production lines to producing new packaged goods for the food and medical or pharmaceutical industries; and producing emergency pipe repair clamps for the oil and gas industries.

The government has given a $50 million boost to the Export Market Development Grants scheme. The grant will help small- and medium-sized businesses to reach their potential and assist them in establishing markets when they go overseas. In June 2014 Minister Truss said:

Farmers and business developers in southern parts of the country will be eyeing the opportunities in the north to expand and diversify their interests. This has been part of our plan to put regional Australia at the heart of the national economic recovery.

The government wants to: develop a food bowl, including premium produce which could help to double Australia's agricultural output; build an energy export industry worth $150 billion to the economy with a major focus on clean and efficient energy, providing major increases to resource exports; and grow the tourist economy in Northern Australia to two million international tourists a year.

On 14 February 2014—on Valentine's Day—the Courier Mail said:

The local content of Australian-made cars was already in decline. Just 30 per cent of the parts to make a Holden Cruze were sourced locally, and the Commodore was only 50 per cent Australian in the end, according to figures supplied by the car maker. Toyota had a Japanese image but the Camry had up to 70 per cent Australian-made parts, the same as the Ford Falcon.

Australia now looks beyond car manufacturing. At the moment, over 50 per cent of world trade is now in components, that is companies and countries making things for a product that is finally assembled somewhere else. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a great example of that. The wing flaps are made in Melbourne and parts of the wings are made in other countries and they are all then flown to Seattle for final completion. But the value of the wing flaps being made at Fishermen's Bend is three billion dollars in contracts to Boeing. That sort of fibre composite technology was common in the auto industry and we need to transpose it into other industries. Boshe Australia are diversifying into new sectors and technologies in the food manufacturing and biotechnology industries.

Passage of this bill provides certainty for ATS participants about the level of assistance available for the final three years of the scheme, which will also assist their future business planning and decision-making. Approximately $700 million in ATS assistance remains available to the industry over the four years from 2014-2015. The Australian government is determined to ensure a strong, long-term future for Australian manufacturing.

I think it was the Kelly review in 1998-1999 that said that we were a high-wage country, that the profitability of the firm had nothing to do with the wages we were paid. You can be a high-wage country, and I support that 100 per cent, if you have low input costs and high productivity. If you have both of those you can be competitive in any market. Take one of those out and you are gone. Whilst we were reasonably competitive in productivity when it came to car manufacturing, import costs in Australia went through the roof. That, coupled with the high Australian dollar, is a blister on everyone's backside at the moment, and I think we have to deal with that.

But we made a decision as a government when we came in here that corporate welfare has to come to an end. As I said, $164,000 per employee in the motor vehicle industry is the Australian taxpayer subsidy to that industry. We are talking about 1,600 jobs in fact here. Labor will say that it is the end of manufacturing in the whole country. Everyone is going to be out of work—50,000 jobs, 100,000 jobs, all gone—and the whole state is going to shut down. But in Queensland over the last couple of years we have seen 14,000 jobs exit the mining industry Ten thousand engineers in Australia have lost jobs in Queensland over the last four years and there has not been the sort of corporate welfare that has been handed out to the good burghers of South Australia and Victoria in this same industry.

It gets down to what is important here. Do we just keep on digging a hole for ourselves as a country? Do we just keep on digging it down? Did we just keep on spending the money until we just completely run out and go completely broke?

Dr Leigh interjecting—

I know the member for Fraser has been on the road to Damascus and he has had a serial conversion on everything, but even he must understand the basic nature of cause and effect. If you keep on doling it out, if you keep on doing these sorts of things, they do not get any better.

We are a high-wage nation, and I have no problems with that, and this government is working to lower the input costs in everyone's industry. That is the secret of us being competitive in this. That is the secret of transitioning these things. You guys would still have us making crap carriages! We cannot have any industry die, we must keep on supporting it. Even though no-one wants the bloody things—pardon me—we have got to keep on building these things. What we must do is make sure that we have opportunities for people and that we do transition out of these areas to things that people can do and can make a living out of.

In a lot of ways, the best thing we can do in shutting these things down is just get on with life, and that is what I am calling on the people of the motor industry to do—get on with their lives. No-one wants to lose their job, but sometimes the best thing you can do—and it has happened to me on a couple of occasions when I have lost a job—is to recognise that one door closes and another door opens. They say that opportunity only knocks once. Opportunity knocks all the time—you have to open the door. That is what we are saying to the people involved in the car industry, because there is opportunity everywhere here in this country and it does not take the taxpayer to pay you $164,000 a year on every job to get it done.

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