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

I thank the member for his question. I know that he is a very, very passionate advocate for the Australian Made logo and for the manufacturers in his electorate.

The first pillar of our Modern Manufacturing Strategy is getting the economic conditions right, particularly for businesses. That's doing things such as driving down the cost of energy. It's lowering taxes. It's creating a skills pipeline. It's making sure that we are doing all that we can to cut red tape. We understand, we know, that getting those economic conditions right for business is going to help them to grow and to create jobs—particularly the jobs that are needed now and for the future.

Just last week I was in the electorate of Longman with the member, and we visited 4x4 Queensland, a great exhaust manufacturing business in his electorate. I'm delighted to say that this week they employed two new workers. These were workers that had been unemployed since the beginning of the year. They turned up yesterday morning on time, ready to go. That's exactly what this government is creating—opportunities for people to take up jobs—and it's exactly what we want to see happening right around the country.

On top of the broad support that we're giving to all industries, we have announced the Modern Manufacturing Strategy, which is a $1.5 billion strategy that sits on top of that very solid foundation. It's helping to build competitiveness, resilience and scale for our industries in some key priority sectors. It's important to understand that, as manufacturers scale up, they will bring with them the small businesses and the medium enterprises. We want businesses to have confidence and we want them to have the opportunity to grow, and that's what this policy will deliver in spades.

I was asked about alternative approaches, and those opposite certainly do have an alternative approach, and unfortunately it's not particularly confidence inspiring. They've actually got a train wreck of a policy on manufacturing. It is centred on begging the states to build trains. Well, good luck with that. Even if it all goes to plan, today, the member for Gorton has revealed that that strategy might—if they're lucky, if everything goes to plan—deliver up to 659 jobs. Well, compare that to what we're doing. Our Modern Manufacturing Strategy is conservatively estimated to produce 80,000 direct jobs. So here's Labor's manufacturing strategy, with 659 jobs, and here's the coalition's. (Time expired)

See this speech in context