Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Well, he's got the title, he accepts the salary but he doesn't do the job. Last year alone, 50,000 manufacturing workers—50,000—lost their jobs, and he's only focused on his defence. That's the only thing he's focused on. So we will not see—I bet you any money, because the shelf life of industry ministers under a coalition government is less than a year. This guy's just mailing it in. The industry minister's just mailing it in. He's not serious about coming up with ways in which to deal with these hard issues of commercialisation. He's not interested in protecting manufacturing workers' jobs—always slow to the party because he ain't fixed on the job.

I'll give you another example. Whyalla steelworkers were under pressure because they were wondering what was going to happen to Sanjeev Gupta's empire because Greensill collapsed—Greensill, which soaked up all these spivs from the Liberal side; any time they wanted a job or a donation, they were right next to Lex Greensill. There was a concern he'd cause a collapse in the steelworks. I write to the industry minister. I say to the industry minister, 'What's plan B for the steelworkers? What's plan B? What is your government going to do to make sure that, if this falls over, people are going to be protected?' I hear nothing from him—nothing at all. Then, just to let you know, Sanjeev Gupta, to the massive relief of steelworkers everywhere, got the refinancing. Guess when Christian Porter writes to me? The same day—he comes back to me then. You're not doing the day job, Christian—I mean industry minister; apologies, Deputy Speaker. If he is focused on that, I'll actually concede. I get it's a big issue for him personally, but he should do the right thing, step back and let someone else focus on protecting the jobs of Australian workers instead of taking the money and not being there when Australians need him.

The government have all these programs. They've just announced this patent box. We'll see if it stacks up. I'm not convinced yet. Let's see if it stacks up, because the thing about the government is that they move on to the next shiny thing to distract you from the last thing that didn't work. If you go through the litany of different things these people were doing in this space, claiming it was innovation, nothing actually came out of them. But they thought, 'Got to distract them with a new idea!' Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer, goes to the UK a few years ago, sees a patent box and says, 'We're going to do this.' We wait. Years later, they announce it in the budget. Let's see if it stacks up. Call me a cynic; I reckon it won't. But that's just me. I'm happy to see if the gurus on the other side make it work or if it's just another example of a flash announcement waiting for a poor delivery.

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