Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

COVID-19 has exposed many underlying issues in Australia. In one way or another, the pandemic has hit everyone. Each of us has had to face small inconveniences, at a minimum, or, at worst, tragedies. Though some of the problems faced by Australians during this pandemic were unavoidable, some would have been prevented if this government had been on their side and had done anything in the last seven years. Whether it's the disproportionate effect COVID-19 has had on multicultural and Indigenous Australians, the small and family businesses that have seen their businesses fold or the fact that Australia does not create medicines onshore, we have been exposed. Many sectors in Australia were either barely keeping their head above water or were being pulled under by the inaction of this government. Manufacturing in Australia is one such industry.

Seven years of damage by this government has left the manufacturing industry reeling. Over 90,000 jobs have been lost in Australia since the coalition has been in government, and there are 140,000 fewer people doing apprenticeships and traineeships than when the coalition took power. No doubt these numbers will grow, especially in my state, where they seem determined to sell all the TAFE campuses. The coalition effectively dared manufacturers out of the country, and they went, leaving Australians in a void. Labor went to the last election with an electric vehicle policy that would have reinvigorated the industry and pushed Australia into becoming the manufacturing powerhouse we can and should be, but the government slammed the idea. Now, three years later, it talks about hybrid cars and transitioning to EVs as if it were a world first. Wouldn't it have been great if Australia had manufactured the vehicles that the entire planet needs? The demand is here now and it continues to grow, as does the demand for good, secure jobs for Australian families, but again and again the government has left workers behind, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Labor's goal was to make Australia self-sufficient. However, those on the other side pursue what seems to be the opposite, outsourcing and offshoring deals that provide nothing for Australian workers or manufacturing. Workers, and the companies that employ them, are ready to wait for incentives from this government to kickstart our manufacturing revival, yet all this government seems to be interested in is rorts and looking after its mates.

The coalition is guilty of neglecting Australian manufacturing not only at a federal level but also at a state level. The Berejiklian government, in my home state of New South Wales, purchased its new inner-city train fleet from South Korea, its metros from India and its light-rail carriages from France and Spain. It bought buses from Germany and Malaysia, and the transport minister managed to purchase from Indonesia ferries that don't fit under the bridges on the river they're made to service. If you're on the top deck, you have to duck when you go under a bridge. The approach of the coalition at state and federal levels is to trash local manufacturing and to trash TAFE. TAFE courses have been cut, and now we have a skills shortage. Why does the coalition think Australians are not innovative or cannot manufacture world-leading goods here at home? Take it from the Premier of New South Wales, apparently the leader of our state. She herself has stated publicly that Australia, including New South Wales, is not good enough to build trains, but the Premier is wrong. There are manufacturing innovators in Australia. There are plenty in my part of the world in south-west Sydney. In my electorate of Werriwa manufacturing is in the top five industries of employment. Eleven per cent of the entire workforce is spread through the industrial precincts of Hoxton Park, Prestons and Ingleburn, and in the near future the Western Sydney airport.

State Asphalts NSW, whose head office is in Prestons, was recently successful in round 10 of the Cooperative Research Centres Projects, receiving almost $3 million in grant funds leading a process into recycling plastic and paperboard waste into value-added asphalt additives. Another business in the south-west, Tacca, pivoted from their packaging origins to make material for protective face masks and shields needed for the brave workers on the front line of the pandemic.

Where there are incentives, there's Australian ingenuity and jobs. Labor is on the side of manufacturing and the Australia that jobs create. Australians need a government that invests in them and one that believes in Australian ingenuity and manufacturing capacity. Australia needs a government on its side.

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