Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. What a wonderful member for Sturt he is!

Australia will always be a manufacturing nation. That's why our government is unashamedly on the side of our manufacturers and those Australians who work in and believe in manufacturing. This morning I hosted a manufacturing roundtable. We had a number of representatives from industry there, our researchers were there and major manufacturing businesses were clearly there today. It was a very productive discussion on what we could do to support manufacturing businesses into the future, to make sure that we are working with our competitive strengths as we build a future for manufacturing in this country. There was a real confidence around the table that Australia's best years of manufacturing are ahead of us. Currently, manufacturing supports about 850,000 jobs in this country and contributes about 5.8 per cent of GDP, and we plan on growing that. The good news is that the value of our manufacturing exports has already grown by around 23 per cent since 2013.

I acknowledge that the manufacturing sector has faced many transitional challenges, including under Labor when one in eight manufacturing jobs were lost. Those transitional challenges are being overcome, and congratulations to our manufacturing industries for what they have managed to achieve through innovation.

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

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