Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the post-World War II years of the 1960s and 1970s, manufacturing accounted for nearly 30 per cent of Australian GDP and 30 per cent of Australian jobs. Today, the figure is less than seven per cent. The decline is not just because of the rise of China or other developing nations where cheap labour is plentiful. It is as much because successive conservative governments have failed to invest in the manufacturing sector and failed to invest in research and development. Indeed, since 2013, under the Abbott, Turnbull and now Morrison governments, total spending on science, research and innovation has declined by more than a billion dollars.

The Morrison government has also failed to ensure there is a stable energy policy and failed to invest in skills training, with nearly 150,000 fewer apprentices today. They've cut billions of dollars from TAFE, so much so that industry leaders have flagged that the Australian naval fleet build is at risk because of shortages of skilled workers. If there were any good to come out of the COVID crisis, it's that it exposed Australia's vulnerabilities in not having a strong manufacturing sector. It was a badly needed wake-up call that 90 per cent of our medicines are imported, that there was a shortage of personal protective equipment, that retail store shelves were, and still are, empty of household goods because they were all imported.

In South Australia, once a booming manufacturing state driven by the vision and drive of a conservative premier, Tom Playford, I have seen the demise of manufacturing for myself. Only last week, I was driving along Philip Highway in Elizabeth in the electorate of Spence, through what was once a thriving manufacturing hub centred around GMH. I saw empty abandoned buildings where previously thousands of people worked every day. All because this government turned its back on GMH. Can I say to the minister that no Labor government ever turned their back on Mitsubishi or Ford. The decision to turn their back on GMH was the most short-sighted decision of any government that I can think of. The economic and security returns of backing GMH far outweighed the relatively little government assistance that they were asking for at the time. In South Australia, business confidence was rocked by their closure and, quite frankly, it has never fully recovered. We then had the government boast about the replacement submarine investment where it seems that most of the work is going to go offshore. Again, we have no confidence in this government's ability to deliver those jobs to South Australia or indeed any other workplace in Australia.

We in Labor value the role of manufacturing. That is why Anthony Albanese announced Labor's plan for a future made in Australia by investing in manufacturing and skills training and encouraging research, development and innovation. In advanced countries like Japan and Germany, manufacturing still accounts for about 20 per cent of their economy. It hasn't fallen that much at all. Those are countries that also have a high standard of living but they have shown that if the government gets behind the manufacturing centre they can remain competitive worldwide. In my own electorate I have a manufacturer, Lanfranco Furniture, who still makes furniture, employs 70 to 80 people and competes every day with imported furniture. They are able do so because of innovation and productivity gains they have been able to make there. Australia could and should do the same.

Manufacturing is critical not just because it creates so many different jobs but because it's critical to our security at times when we are left vulnerable, as we were with COVID-19. We were dependent on every other nation around the world for the essential needs of the people of this country due to the short-sightedness of this government and of conservative governments around Australia. In time, they will wake up to their foolishness and do exactly what some other advanced manufacturing countries, like Japan and Germany, are doing. (Time expired)

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