Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 5 and 6 March in the town of Wagin there's a field day called the Wagin Woolorama. It's a livestock show, and the best livestock in Western Australia will be on display. As a regional member, I extend the invitation to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the member for Paterson as another regional member. Please come to the Woolorama and you'll see the best that Western Australia has to offer.

The important thing about the Wagin Woolorama is that it's also a trade show. You'd also get to see some of the outstanding manufactured products that are produced in my electorate of O'Connor for consumption within my electorate of O'Connor but also, in some instances, exported around the word.

I want to start at the small end: Bird's Silos in Popanyinning. Popanyinning is a small town 30 or 40 kilometres north of Narrogin, which is a regional centre. Popo's got a population of about 20. The engineering business Bird's of Popanyinning would employ at least 20, so there are people who travel from the surrounding districts. They produce grain-handling equipment and livestock feeding equipment. They've been doing that for many, many years and they do it very, very well. The thing I love about those sorts of businesses is the very flat management structure. The owners generally are working in the workshop, working on the floor, and they produce a fantastic product. That's a great example of one of those small-end manufacturing businesses in my seat of O'Connor.

Moving up to the mid-sized range business is Himac, based in Albany, my home town. It employs 60 or 70 people, and the interesting thing about this business is that it produces attachments for bobcats, diggers, sweepers—those sorts of pieces of equipment. They do it so well that they are now exporting that product to the eastern states. They've just set up a branch in Sydney, but they're taking advantage of the very cheap backload rates to send their product straight into the heart of the eastern states into Sydney and are selling products widely in that area.

Duraquip and Commander Ag-Quip are businesses that produce well-manufactured products that are specifically suited for agriculture and they're competing against cheap imported products from China. The only way they can do that is to make a good-quality product and back it up with good service, and they do that extremely well.

So, that's the Wagin Woolorama. As I say, on 5 and 6 March, I extend an invitation to all members to visit Wagin and see the best of what Western Australia has to offer.

Moving further north to Kalgoorlie, which is the heart and soul of the Western Australian mining industry, we have some fantastic innovative manufacturers. Newland Precision Engineering produce underground mining equipment, whether it be drills or other underground equipment, and they're exporting it to the rest of the world. It's a fantastic product—Australian ingenuity, quality manufacturing processes. It's competing on the world stage and competing effectively.

Hahn Electrical Contracting, another business set up in Kalgoorlie by Allan and Daphne Hahn, produces underground electrical equipment and installs it. This business has grown to a couple of hundred people who work there. The thing I love about Hahns is their attitude towards apprentices. Craig, the manager, is always keen to take on apprentices. They take on high-school students doing their work placement to try and encourage them into the industry, and that is fantastic. That is one of the major challenges our manufacturing businesses have across O'Connor, and I hear it everywhere I go—accessing skilled labour. Getting people to live and work in our regional towns is getting harder and harder, Deputy Speaker, as you would know, so attracting skilled tradespeople to these businesses is getting more and more challenging. In Kalgoorlie, the government has instituted a designated area migration agreement, where boilermakers and other high skilled businesses are on the list. But, with COVID, unfortunately, that hasn't been as effective as we would have liked, because we can't get anyone in.

Of course, the government is also looking to stimulate the apprenticeship sector, with 350,000 new apprenticeships. I sincerely hope that many of them end up in my electorate of O'Connor to support those fantastic small businesses and the people who work in them and drive the Australian economy.

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