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

Remember back in January last year when, if you were on the eastern seaboard, you couldn't leave your house? Three states were affected by a thick blanket of smoke. Fires ripped through roughly 20 million hectares of land. Three thousand homes were destroyed. There was international attention on the terrible impact. The country turned to its Prime Minister, who had been out of the country. In a radio interview, when the Prime Minister was asked for help—'Give us assistance'—what did he say? 'I don't hold a hose, mate.' When people needed their leaders, when they needed their Prime Minister, we just got abrogation and giving up: 'I don't hold a hose, mate. It's not my responsibility.' You might think, 'That was just a throwaway line; maybe don't be too hard on him,' but the reality is that this reflects, at its core, the philosophy of that side.

Those opposite have worked for decades to undermine the value and role of government so that, when we get to a point where we need it, they say, 'It's not our job.' They have degraded the role of government for years, for decades, saying it's all too hard to do anything. Mind you, they don't mind leaching off government. They don't mind getting into government. They don't mind getting into the plum jobs and appointing all their mates to the plum jobs—13 this year, by the way. They put them in there and they think there's a role for government there, but government should never be there. It's always about getting them out of the way.

We built a national university. We built the CSIRO. We built Snowy Hydro. Mind you, it was Labor pushing a lot of that. That was government in action, creating jobs. We also had car makers. Remember that thing—car manufacturing? That's what we used to have. That's what we put in place. But those opposite are never there for industry. They're never there to back manufacturing. Remember—and a lot of us do—at that dispatch box you had a federal Liberal Treasurer goading auto manufacturers out of the country, devastating different parts of the nation, including the deputy leader's own electorate, and I know there were a lot of other electorates that lost auto manufacturing workers and lost those small businesses that depended on the sector. They were all gone, goaded out by those opposite.

Remember that it's their philosophy that governments shouldn't do anything. What did Tony Abbott do when they first came in? He cut our manufacturing support. What we'd had in as funds the Liberals cut—first thing. So is it any surprise that when we got to a pandemic and everyone turned to get stuff that they think could be manufactured here there was nothing? You couldn't get what you needed. It was then that we realised that we were dependent wholly and solely on global supply chains and that we didn't have local manufacturing. We didn't have the ability to do that locally. And what did we see after they'd pushed out the auto manufacturers and after we saw them rip money out of support for manufacturing? Ninety thousand manufacturing jobs before the pandemic and 50,000 during the pandemic. Even their department of industry, people would not be aware—50,000 manufacturing jobs gone in the last 12 months. That is their track record.

After ripping out all that funding, what happened? There was a resurrection. They suddenly decided that they'd bring back manufacturing, and they're now all big champions of this modern manufacturing initiative that is pretty much a restoration of what we had in the first place. But, as is always the way, it's about the announcement, and then you look at the delivery. They announced this $1.5 billion fund, and their then industry minister said, 'We'll get round to spending three per cent in this financial year. They announced it in the last budget—not this one but the one back in October—and said three per cent would be spent in this financial year. The sum total of their commitment to manufacturing was that they would do that.

You would think that with that big fund they would have an industry minister who would basically throw themselves into making sure that with that money they'd work hard to get those manufacturing jobs back, they'd work hard to make sure those were full-time jobs, they'd work hard to make sure that wages grew and they'd fully commit and dedicate themselves to this. What happened? The minister who announced the program has gone. That's no surprise, because you should be aware that the shelf life of an industry minister in a coalition government is 330 days on average. That's 330 days to leave a mark. Less than a year and they're gone. When you go through all their industry ministers, they don't hang around for too long. Bearing in mind that track record, who did they appoint to be the industry minister? Christian Porter. More place card than minister is this bloke. He will not be around at all. His day job is not to be industry minister. His day job is to do the preparation for a legal defence. His mind is not in it. Is it any surprise he's not here? Who's representing the industry minister here today? It will be interesting to see, because he won't be here himself. The industry minister is a great barrister. He's across his brief. He will be able to rattle off all those facts, but his heart isn't in it, just like the rest of those opposite. Their hearts are not in it for manufacturing. It's so bad that even their own side are commenting on it. On 16 May in the Sydney Morning Herald:

'It's not optional for a minister': Growing disquiet among Liberal MPs over Christian Porter's media silence.

His own side are saying that they couldn't see him. They couldn't find him anywhere. Here we are trying to rebuild manufacturing, to create jobs that have been lost and to support people's wages, and he's not around. In fact, one MP said to the papers:

Backbenchers can get away with not doing media but it’s not optional for a minister — they have to do media.

That was on 16 May. He hadn't done a press conference, and guess what happened. That article appeared on 16 May, and when did Christian Porter do his media conference? On 21 May. It's pure coincidence. The minister did his press conference—

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