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

The bushfire rorts as well, as the member for Macquarie has rightly pointed out. This government has a track record of rorting that is an absolute national shame. They know it's bad, because they won't set up a national integrity commission to stop that kind of behaviour. After all the publicity on the way they have misused our taxpayer dollars, the embarrassment and the shame that has been heaped on them, you would think that they would learn the lesson. You would think that they would do differently. But what do they do? They go: 'No, we've got one better. We've done sports rorts, roads rorts, regional funding rorts and bushfire rorts. Now we're going to have manufacturing rorts, where we'll just spend money in that way.' This is terrible, and it undermines the faith people have in the way these vital government dollars could actually support industry evolution and the growth of manufacturing in this country, which has been under huge pressure.

When we went through the pandemic and we couldn't get the things that we thought Australia should have the capability to manufacture onshore, and when we realised the way in which global supply chains were letting us down, we thought: 'You know what? We're not just going to go back to normal; we'll do better. We'll actually build a modern manufacturing sector in this country that can deliver on a wide range of projects.' In the Labor Party we don't think that it should be just niche manufacturing. It should be, where we can, manufacturing at scale. We in the Labor Party believe in manufacturing, because the reality is that these sectors generate predominantly full-time, sustainable jobs, and they deliver value in the Australian context for the Australian economy here and beyond. They are very important to follow up.

The government have put forward $1.5 billion, but then they announced all these side programs that continually diminish the funding impact that the program has by continually slicing off small sections of that funding in such a way that we would raise questions as to whether or not the program will achieve its intended purpose at all. We think that the government's intent of having more discretion and more control over where innovation funding goes, instead of having industry peak bodies make decisions using their experience and expertise—we are very concerned about where things are headed in relation to that. It's very troubling knowing, as I said, this government's history of rorts. We have little faith that the extra cash will go into kickstarting the innovation ecosystem. Unfortunately, with this model, the likely outcome is that the money will sit there unadministered, and we've seen that at scale with the way, for instance, the government announces billions going into things like infrastructure investment and then, on an annual basis, there's a $1.2 billion underspend. We don't need the same thing happening in the innovation and industry space. We need to see, for instance, more of that lead into the support and the growth of the manufacturing sector in this country.

We would also hope that we could, in the middle or at the outset of a pandemic, see the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines onshore. That is manufacturing that would make a difference to Australian people. In New South Wales, people are genuinely worried about the prospect of a lockdown. Victoria has had to go through lockdowns as well, and other parts of the country are now shutting their borders to prevent travel, and we're going into, again, a period of enforced hibernation, because, understandably, governments want to protect the population from getting COVID and, in particular, the delta variant that has been going around. We need to be agile in responding to putting out vaccines that can best combat that variant of COVID.

Now, when we asked the industry department when we could expect to see domestic manufacturing of the vaccine, we were told it could take, if it were a greenfield site, up to four years. Bear in mind the previous industry minister said nine months ago that in nine months time we would be in a position to potentially announce the manufacture of mRNA vaccines in Australia within the space of 12 months. The new industry minister, I might say, is just marking time. This bloke's heart is not in this job. He is just marking time. Bear in mind we've had Minister Macfarlane, Minister Pyne, Minister Hunt, Minister Sinodinos, Minister Andrews and now Minister Porter—an average shelf life of 330 days, less than a year, in the job! This new minister reckons, in answers to questions put by the opposition during question time about domestic manufacturing and when we can expect to see it: 'It could be four years, but it could be 13 months. It could be anywhere between 13 months and four years.' This is not a small range. If it were between 13 months and 18 months, sure. But between 13 months and four years is when we can expect, potentially, onshore manufacture of mRNA vaccines, at a time when parts of the country are genuinely concerned about the prospect of a lockdown.

Again, it reminds us that this government had two jobs to do—vaccine rollout and national quarantine. On the vaccine rollout, they so fundamentally stuffed it up. The thing is that state governments get it too. It doesn't matter about the political hue of the government at the state level; both expected that the feds would step up on the vaccine rollout, and they didn't. They both expected that the states would see national quarantining being put forward. It didn't happen. On the manufacture of local vaccines: this government can't get its act together and can't tell us when, between 13 months and four years, we'll see domestic manufacture of COVID vaccines in this country that can cater to emerging variants, to protect the population of Australia. We just have guesswork being done. They are bungling securing the vaccine in the first place and manufacturing it in the second place. This is not good enough. And their big idea on innovation is a name change. That's all they'll do. They won't support and advance how to use innovation not only to protect the nation through the pandemic; they cannot put forward ideas on how to re-gear an economy that has been pummelled by the pandemic. In particular, they've got no idea about where the economic consequences of this pandemic affecting societies globally will go.

The government lurch from idea to idea. They don't provide a robust form of support for manufacturing in terms of their strategies. They get rid of other successful strategies that they have because they don't suit their political interests. They can't manufacture vaccine in this country in a way that our people would expect. And then they lurch to the next shiny thing in the biotech and medical space, thinking that it'll help and that this is an innovation they can import from overseas. Again, the Prime Minister thinks that the best thing that we can do for innovation in this country is copy someone else's.

So now we've got the next shiny thing—patent boxes, which is just the latest idea the Treasurer picked up on one of his trips over to the UK, when we could actually do that. He's brought it back and thinks that if we give this tax incentive it will kick start R&D in this space. Mind you, they wanted to rip out $2 billion from R&D. The innovation that they came up with in this space was to not do the funding cut. The innovation, if I can add, is for them to now spruik, 'We've put $2 billion into R&D because we're not going ahead with the cuts that we thought we'd do.' That's their big innovation! That's what they go around and spruik. And then, on top of that, they put forward a patent box idea. We in the opposition will genuinely leave our minds open to the patent box scheme that's been put forward—which, mind you, this government haven't actually stepped forward and given us details on, but let's see what they reckon works; let's see how their plan will make it work onshore. But we remain to be convinced on whether or not this will actually work, because patent boxes have not been universally embraced as a way to drive innovation in different countries. But we remain open; we will talk with industry on this and see what can be done. So, on those things, we think that the government does have a lot to explain as to whether or not that will also translate into something meaningful. Again, if we go through all of the innovations of this government and what they've put forward, they put forward equity crowdfunding to help finance new innovation, but we have no idea about how that's going. They put forward tax incentives that they thought would drive innovation, particularly early-stage innovation through angel investment, and we've seen angel investment contract for three consecutive years. They talk about employee share ownership schemes and reforms to them. They still haven't brought forward the legislation to prosecute those schemes. They've now announced that they'll put in patent boxes, but there's no detail about where that will go, and it's just embracing someone else's idea. They said they'd fund mRNA vaccine manufacture onshore. We don't know whether it's going to happen within 13 months or four years. We haven't seen that. We have a modern manufacturing fund that could only generate 79 jobs for $79 million in the first round of funding. So we've got a long way to go. We think innovation will be critical in terms of regearing and reimagining the economy. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes the jobs and economic growth generated from a robust innovation ecosystem; and

(2) condemns the Coalition Government for its continual failure to back Australian industry and innovation, particularly to deal with challenges arising from the pandemic".

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