George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm finding it highly amusing to carry on. What's not amusing, what's actually invigorating, is the potential in the Mackay region for new manufacturing and new industry. We have a Mackay alternative sugarcane processing facility that's currently an idea in germination. It's actually more than an idea, as a substantial business case that was done finds that it stacks up, and this is really innovative stuff. It's never been done, not just in Australia but in the world. It could take our sugarcane industry from where it is, which basically has about three, maybe four products that are used in the main—the raw crystal, the molasses, the gas, the ethanol—and the co-generation is another product that comes out of sugar at the moment, and take it to a variety of different streams of income for farmers and millers alike. That's the kind of innovation we need, that's the kind of innovation that IISA is going to be looking at and looking after and it's the kind of innovation that we are currently trying to crack open with our Modern Manufacturing Initiative.

More than that, up in Brandon, in the northern part of my electorate, there is a rice mill. Not many people know about it, but it's actually owned by a little company called SunRice. SunRice are hoping that they can expand that facility and make North Queensland the new centre of operations, eventually equal to what we have in New South Wales. That is great innovation that, if we can crack it open and get more manufacturing into the region, is going to be very important. In Bowen as well, talking about innovation, we've literally got a rocket company, Gilmour Space Technologies, which has identified Abbot Point as a prime site for satellite launch capability. I've been working with them and the relevant ministers to try to facilitate this. It's something that is going to go off—literally! I look forward to the day when we launch our rockets from the Whitsundays. It would boost Australia's capability. We don't have a great deal of launch capability in this country. That is a strategic need. I'm sure that IISA is going to be facilitating and assisting in these endeavours as well.

One thing I'm proud as punch about is that, in my electorate, there is an agave distillery project. We can't call it tequila, because Mexico has the brand on that, and I don't like talking too much about tequila because of bad, bad memories from many decades ago!

An honourable member interjecting—

You probably couldn't call relevance because most of it I can't remember to be relevant! This agave facility is looking for Modern Manufacturing Initiative funding as well. I'm sure this is going to be the kind of thing the government is going to want to promote with manufacturing. It's all about food and beverage manufacturing, but this is really niche stuff that could pay off big time and could lead to a whole heap of jobs. I certainly wouldn't be touting the health benefits of agave, but Top Shelf International reckons they've got 450,000 blue agave plants. They're hoping to reach one million plants in the ground in North Queensland by 2024, and that's going to produce a lot of spirits to go right around the world. I've been invited to taste a prototype of the product—a member's got to do what a member's got to do! I'll gladly report back to the House on how good top-shelf agave spirit is once I'm able to get back to my electorate.

But all of these products and projects—whether it is pursuing an agave distillery in the Whitsundays, space launches out of Bowen, rice production in Brandon, a new methodology of processing sugarcane that can produce wholly new items in Mackay or, indeed, pursuing different and innovative uses for ivermectin—are critical to Australia's future manufacturing capabilities. That's what this initiative is all about. I really hope the IISA looks at all of these projects and helps facilitate them to go further, because they are going to be instrumental in creating the jobs of the future, the ones in my electorate. It's all going to be about jobs in the regions, and that is vitally important. I commend all of those projects and I commend the bill. Go, manufacturing!

See this speech in context