Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is interesting that the government was not even able to marshal three speakers on this and we had to recycle the member for Corangamite in order to continue the debate. That really does say it all about the commitment of this government to this fundamental task of supporting innovation and industry in this country.

I believe, as the members on this side have said, that we have a very profound problem facing us. As I travel around Western Australia, I see the amount of restructuring that is going on and the extent of the job losses in not only the mining sector but also a lot of industries that are associated with the mining sector. We are going to have a very, very real challenge in terms of creating employment, and we see that already feeding through the unemployment statistics, which unfortunately are tracking very much in the wrong direction. And, of course, we are racing to notch up various free trade agreements, which will place Australian non-agricultural industries under even greater pressure.

I want to talk a little bit today about some of the creativity that we are, nevertheless, seeing in Australia. We all know the tragic stories about Australian inventions that went overseas for commercialisation and manufacturing—the Xerox, the black box, Wi-Fi, and various photovoltaic technologies. But I have to say that, despite all this doom and gloom, there are actually signs of life. One of the fabulous things about this role is that you come across those. I want to talk about a few of these that I have been dealing with. One is Hofmann Engineering. This is an outfit based in my electorate. It employs around 600 people and is headquartered in Bayswater. It was founded by two immigrant toolmakers 45 years ago and now has facilities not only in Western Australia but also in Victoria and New South Wales.

Quality in innovation has been really at the heart of this company. They design, manufacture, repair and refurbish mining and industrial equipment. They are now the largest privately owned engineering company in Australia. They really are in the heart of the beast. They manufacture steel mill gears for export to China, they produce wind-turbine gears for clients in Germany and they produce aircraft parts for the US. The company tell me that they are spending around $33 million each year to deliver innovation and flexibility, and they point to the strategic role that various innovation grants from government have had in allowing them to be ahead of the curve and continue to be competitive in a very, very challenging environment. They also depend very heavily on the development tax breaks that they get, and it is important that they get them. They also have participated in defence industries, and they provide parts for submarines.

We have enough company in WA, Fairclough Corporation, an extraordinary group. They have developed equipment that is used in ultrasonic testing, imaging, track geometry and ground-penetrating radar to determine the condition and soundness of railroad tracks, and they manufacture the equipment. So the technology is being developed here, and we are seeing this equipment being manufactured and exported into markets like Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, China and Korea.

We have a company called PDC. Their slogan is 'engineering evolved'. They create highly accurate scaled virtual models of all the structural components in a building. These independent models and data are integrated and standardised to produce a 3-D model. In this way, they can determine the progress of a construction project, anticipate the problems and cut costs very significantly. They are currently doing work on the new Apple campus in California.

So we have all of this creativity here, but all of these companies are saying to us that they need government to help them and to match, with their policy, the inventiveness of these companies.

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