Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we celebrate Victoria's opening and thank all Victorians for their amazingly selfless effort and sacrifices for the common good, which are an example for us all, we should all look forward to the firing of the great cylinder that is the Victorian economy which will fuel the national recovery. Its reopening will allow Victoria to draw on its impressive trade and investment partnerships with established growth markets in the Indo-Pacific region. It's two-way trade relationship with South-East Asia alone grew by 30 per cent in the last decade to $15.3 billion. Not only for Victoria but for all Australians states and territories and for my beloved Northern Territory, trade and investment will drive a lot of our economic recovery. So that's what I wanted to speak about today in my appropriation bills speech.

Increasing the scale, scope and productivity of manufacturing in Australia is a big focus right now, and rightly so: we all want to see a future made in Australia. But we need to go beyond trite marketing measures like new logos for $10 million. Australia doesn't need a makeover. We don't need another branding exercise. We need an integrated trade and manufacturing strategy that goes well beyond this government's favourite gimmicks of rebranding strategies and its co-opting of celebrities, because we've all seen how that's not gone so well.

There's so much we can build better by building Aussie. There's growing demand for quality, clean and green Aussie-made goods today as much as ever. That's why it's important that, even as we focus on growing our manufacturing sector, we think of manufacturing and trade policy as two legs of the same economic recovery strategy, because the one can fuel growth in the other.

Across the country, necessary measures to suppress the vicious coronavirus pandemic of course slowed or limited trade orientated economic activity in order to save lives. Many farms, factories, office buildings and other export orientated workplaces that build, refine and sell their goods or services to overseas markets were limited or shut for long periods during lockdowns here and abroad. So the slowdown in trade, which is coming to an end, will give a welcome tailwind to our exporters everywhere. As Australians reap that trade dividend, it's an opportunity for the government to do a lot more to foster strategic industries that have high-growth potential, especially in our Indo-Pacific region as it also reopens and rebounds.

For too long, this government has divorced what we build and sell from the nation we build at home. For too long, the government has been happy to let the market decide trade and manufacturing policy without doing the work to diversify and strengthen our economic productivity and resilience to future shocks. It only really woke up to this economic and strategic imperative this year when overlapping economic shocks really kicked us in the teeth as a nation. For too long, the government rejected its responsibility for putting a strategy in place to grow manufacturing and other promising sectors to give Aussies a leg-up as they target growth markets like India and Indonesia. I don't need to remind those listening today, but I will anyway: it was those opposite when Joe Hockey basically goaded the car manufacturing industry to leave this nation. That was no good for our nation. I think a lot of people came to understand that. We need to rebuild that manufacturing sector. For too long, when things have gone wrong, the government has been happy to tell Australian exporters to take responsibility for their risk assessments: 'Just log on to the DFAT website and rake in the practically free dividends from our free trade agreements', for example. We've got new and improved opportunities being negotiated by a government that's the king of spin, with, sadly, very little substance behind it. You can't spin your way out of the atrophying of the manufacturing sector for years under coalition governments, of which, as I mentioned, the disastrous loss of Holden was only the most obvious major mistake in industry policy.

The government has a plan, it now tells us. Well, forgive me and forgive my constituents for greeting cautiously any one of these government rebranding exercises which looks fantastic on paper. During the presser it is fantastic. But, unfortunately, I am concerned it is going to spell more letdowns than deeds and dollars, and deeds and dollars are what Australian industry needs—not to be let down, not to be blamed and not to be knocked back when it needs to have just that from the federal government.

The Labor Party doesn't just have a vision; it has a plan for a future made in Australia—one in which we use our skills, smarts and people in industry to make things here and sell them on a global market. We want to build the high-quality, high-end products of a future economy that we can export in a strategy that diversifies and strengthens our economy over time—high-quality and high-end products of a future economy. Liberal governments have long said we can't build trains here. But what's missing, of course, is a government that (1) believes in manufacturing and (2) has a plan. Our leader has been clear: a Labor government will create a national rail manufacturing plan. Building and exporting go together like a horse and carriage. By better coordinating industry and trade policy, we can ensure that building and buying Australian gets us to a position of trading from strength, not from vulnerability.

Last year the Leader of the Opposition tasked me with leading a new Indo-Pacific trade task force of the Australian Labor Party, and to consult with stakeholders across Australia in business, industry, horticulture—every trade exposed sector in our electorates which cover every part of Australia—and to advise on trade and investment policy. The findings of the Indo-Pacific trade task force will soon be delivered to the leader and our shadow trade minister, Madeleine King, both of whom I thank for their leadership and advice in this process. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel, because of Labor's proud record of driving economic reforms under the Hawke and Keating governments and because of the deepening of Australia's integration into the Indo-Pacific region that we did under the Rudd and Gillard governments.

Labor has used trade to make Australia a fairer, wealthier, more decent and stronger nation. Labor's vision is one which recognises that trade isn't just a lever we pull in the hope it will make us richer, or deregulating to such an extent that we expose Australian workers and businesses to an economic rollercoaster without a seatbelt. No; Australia needs open trade and we still need market access to our important trading partners, even as we pivot over the medium term to new growth markets to spread out our risks. We should always remember the dark days of protectionism under conservative governments that imposed on Australia a handbrake that only limited us.

Labor believes in balancing international trade exposure with resilience to look after both our workers and the general population. There is no argument that this can be done, because we have done it. We will always uphold our values about making Australia fairer as we make it wealthier. These are not either/or values, and anyone who argues this is at odds with the hard facts on the historical record. These values shine through in Anthony Albanese's, the member for Grayndler's, vision statements and in our party's vision for Australia. You have to look very closely or maybe squint from afar to find any trace of vision in this government—and anyone who finds vision there should maybe see an optometrist! To paraphrase former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt—and I know that the member for Goldstein, in places he doesn't talk about at parties, knows that the government that he is a member of is bereft of vision. But, beyond vision, we have our eyes on the prize, which is growth in the economic productivity of our exporters in manufacturing, agriculture and other growth industries.

The Northern Territory is brimming with opportunities in sectors for which there is a resurgence of demand domestically and overseas, even as we speak. More than a new logo, what Northern Territory businesses need is some support to grow to their full potential in accessing markets. We don't need new funding sources or policies to do this. That funding could come from the $5 billion NAIF, of which about $40 million was spent last time I checked.

The NT is easy to stereotype. Everyone knows that we farm barramundi, we run cattle and we grow mangoes. Just ask some of my colleagues, from both sides of the House, who received some of the Top End's juiciest Kensington Prides last week. We were once famous for the dubious fashion stylings of Crocodile Dundee, with his leather vest and croc tooth accessories. I note that I am donning—not as a prop—a crocodile leather jacket.

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