Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the role that Australian manufacturing businesses continue to play in ensuring our nation has vital supplies, including food and personal protective equipment, especially during the pandemic when global supply chains were disrupted;

(2) recognises that a vibrant manufacturing sector is important for our economic security; and

(3) congratulates Australian manufacturing businesses on their ongoing efforts to adapt to the current circumstances, keep people in jobs, support local supply chains and contribute to our national economic recovery.

To back Australian manufacturing, we must leverage the strengths that give our industries a competitive advantage. The new era of Australian manufacturing will focus on Australia's strength, where we compete on quality and value not just price. The Morrison government's $1.5 billion modern manufacturing strategy will evolve with industry to maximise our opportunities by leveraging our advantages and generating a national manufacturing industry that will create and sustain jobs. I'm so pleased that this industry will, I believe, have a heart in Western Sydney. That's why this strategy will target national manufacturing priorities, where we can exercise our advantages, take hold of emerging opportunities and address strategic interests, particularly in advanced manufacturing.

Australia does recognise these advantages and the quality and value of Australian manufacturing. Recent data shows that over 95 per cent of Australians associate the iconic Australian Made logo, the golden kangaroo, with high-quality products and local jobs. I launched my petition to back Australian manufacturing to harness this groundswell of community support alongside my advancing manufacturing task force in Western Sydney, collaborating with leaders in industry and education to address the barriers facing local manufacturers and to explore opportunities to unlock their potential and create more local jobs—pragmatic ways to get advanced manufacturing off the ground in Western Sydney.

The demand for Australian made has never been stronger. The modern manufacturing strategy is about making sure we take advantage of this opportunity to build a strong, resilient, thriving and internationally competitive manufacturing industry.

Western Sydney can be at the forefront of this new era of Australian manufacturing. We have the existing networks of established manufacturers and the investment to support emerging industries and start-ups. In Lindsay we have over 600 manufacturers. I've been meeting and speaking with many of them on an ongoing basis. Some of them are: Grant Engineered, Pluspec, SpanSet, Custom Denning, J Sinclair Engineering, GPC Electronics—doing wonderful things in our community at the forefront of manufacturing in the future. I'm so proud that this government is backing these local manufacturers.

Throughout this pandemic, they have been resilient, they've been adaptable and they've been determined to stay in a position where they can respond on the other side. Many manufacturers proved their adaptability to the conditions and jumped at the opportunity to produce critical supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE, to combat the pandemic. They wanted to go above and beyond, and do something for our community.

Australian manufacturers have created hundreds of millions of protective masks, almost 450 million, at our domestic manufacturing production capacity in 2020 alone. Textiles and clothing companies have converted their outputs to produce thousands of surgical gowns and engineering firms have been making bottles for hand sanitiser.

Based in Western Sydney, Australian manufacturer ResMed has delivered more than 5,500 ventilators and contracted a group of Australian manufacturers and engineers to make 2,000 invasive ventilators here in Australia with over 99 per cent of the components Australian made. The growth in this sector has been aided by the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre register which helps businesses, hospitals, GPs and community groups to find suppliers of critical products in response to the coronavirus. By increasing access to potential customers and equipping our response to the coronavirus, it shows how the Morrison government's strategy to support businesses to get on with what they do best will create more jobs and strengthen our national resistance.

As we emerge from coronavirus, there can be no economic recovery without a jobs recovery. Australian manufacturing will play such a key role in creating more local jobs. We're investing in this new era in Australian manufacturing to bolster our own national resilience to future shocks in global supply chains. We're investing over $107 million in the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative and we know that manufacturers have the potential to strengthen the resilience of our national economy and to create jobs. Our economic plan will make it happen. The hardworking aspirational manufacturers in Lindsay and across Australia can know the Morrison government is backing them with the policies and support they need to be more competitive, to scale up, to expand, to thrive and to create more jobs.

See this speech in context