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

Yes, we have been in government—and thank goodness the opposition are not in government, because not only do they not understand manufacturing; they don't understand vocational education and training either.

So we are getting the economic conditions right. We're making sure that we do have the skilled workforces that all of our businesses need for the future. We are working on energy costs, because we know what a significant input that is for our manufacturers. We're looking at tax settings. We're looking at what we can do to support our businesses. We've made changes to the R&D tax incentive.

I think probably at this point what I might do is actually talk about the value-add and how important that is to Australian manufacturing. For quite some time, the focus in Australia on manufacturing was just the production part that was in the middle. The manufacturing smile curve demonstrates how big the manufacturing sector is here in Australia, and it demonstrates where the value-add actually is. The value-add is in things such as research and development; it's in design; it's in logistics; and, yes, there's value-add in the production part in the middle. But there's greater value-add as you start to come out on the other side of the production process on the smile curve and you're starting to look at what can happen with sales, marketing and after-sales services.

What we as a government are doing is focusing on three things. We are focusing on competitiveness; clearly, resilience; and building scale. We're making sure that we are looking at the value-added component of it. So there are three streams that we are focusing on. The big stream is the collaboration stream. That's where we are going to be bringing businesses together, along with researchers, building the supply chains both here within Australia and externally. Work is well underway to develop the road maps that will input into that and the guidelines that will input into that.

There are also two other streams that are very important to us. One is making sure that there is support for those businesses that are looking to commercialise their good ideas. We know that commercialisation is where there are real opportunities for us in this country, and hence we've made that a focus of our manufacturing strategy. We also know—and this is the third stream—how important it is for our businesses, for our manufacturers, to be able to access international supply chains so that we can get their products injected into our supply chains overseas. Perhaps the best example of that is the commitment that we have made to Australian businesses in the space sector for $150 million in funding for our businesses to be able to support the NASA Moon to Mars program, the Artemis program. NASA has stated very, very clearly that we will be supporting our businesses, we will get them into the supply chain and NASA is going to get us back to the moon by 2024—

Honourable members interjecting—

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