Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, a Victorian member interjecting about the car manufacturers leaving. It took a pandemic for them to actually wake up to how important Australian core capabilities are. As a member of the AMWU, as a member of the Labor Party that cares about jobs, we can imagine what Australia would be like without manufacturing. We can think big, like the big Australian; remember BHP thinking big in terms of being a bold and successful manufacturing sector? We believed that before the pandemic. We believed in producing, marketing and value-adding—value-adding to our food and fibre, value-adding to the things we dig out of the ground, value-adding before we send it overseas. But what do we have from those opposite, the 'I don't hold a hose' gang? They're happy to put out a brochure with a picture of a hose. They're happy to send that out to people and happy to get some consultants to take a photo of a hose, so they can test the market with a few people and then send out a brochure.

I want to be part of a party with a leader that will hold the hose, will go towards the flame and will say: 'We believe in manufacturing. We believe in an Australia that makes things.' Our leader believed that before the pandemic hit. We know from the minister's own figures that the department of industry's own estimates indicate 50,000 Australian manufacturing jobs were lost last year. What else is there? That extra little cherry on that rancid cake is the idea that there will be a cut to real wages for Australian manufacturing workers of $7,800. So they talk about the great brochures that they've got with hoses, but, when it actually comes to helping Australian manufacturers, they're missing.

I know that this Prime Minister is the king of the photo opportunity. He will do anything to get in to a photo op to look like he's doing something. I even remember him turning up at a manufacturing plant in 2019. Unfortunately, it was a manufacturing plant in the United States!

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