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

Thank you for that, Deputy Speaker. I hear what you've had to say there. The member for Hughes referred to Professor Borody. I am referring to the Monash biomedicine Discovery Institute and Dr Kylie Wagstaff.

They're doing important work. Obviously, that important work could lead to potential future manufacturing of the drug. The innovation would be that drug, ivermectin, being used in a new fashion to treat a new virus; I really look forward to that. So I thank the member for Hughes for bringing that up here. I am astonished as to why people would want to silence that. It's not the member for Hughes talking about the 48 hours that it took for it to destroy those cells but it's Monash University and their Biomedicine Discovery Institute. So more power to them and I hope they go on to manufacture—or at least to be part of the great manufacturing story of this nation—what might potentially be a wonder drug. I notice that the current study they have is in peer review. We'll wait and see what that comes out and says, but it seems very promising.

We want to grow our manufacturing sector with these new drugs, usage of drugs that are coming onto the market and a whole heap of other activities. I want to talk about some of the activities in my electorate—the Mackay region, in particular. The Mackay region takes up probably two-thirds of the electorate of Dawson. There is Mackay itself, of course, the Whitsundays and Bowen, and then we go into the electorate of Capricornia, where we have Collinsville and the coalfields. But my electorate is the service hub for the Bowen and Galilee basins. The Galilee Basin, of course, is also something that the opposite side didn't want talked about some time ago so I might get shut down for that as well. Mackay was identified by another thing that the opposition don't like talking about—the Adani Group—as being the key service centre for its $21 billion coalmine project in the Galilee Basin. There are estimates that for every one manufacturing job that's created we create another three jobs in other areas of the economy. So Adani making Mackay the service hub for their mine, the Carmichael mine—and Adani is now actually called Bravus, so I should refer to it by its new name—has led to more manufacturing for the resources industry in our region and to more manufacturing jobs, organically.

But we are helping, and we've already helped, as the Morrison government. In June this year I was very pleased to announce to CQ Field Mining Services, a Mackay based mining service business, that they were one of 86 across the country to receive funding under the second round of the Morrison government's Manufacturing Modernisation Fund. That fund is designed to help businesses modernise their manufacturing processes and, because of that, it improves productivity, it reduces costs and it enables them to target new export opportunities and create highly skilled manufacturing. That, indeed, is what the core of the bill before us is all about. It's all about how we can do more through our Modern Manufacturing Initiative to assist industries. The Manufacturing Modernisation Fund is a critical part of that. CQ Field Mining Services is a maintenance and construction contractor. They will be investing in transforming their METS—mining equipment, technology and services—operations with the funding that they've received. There are many other innovative manufacturing projects across my region that are as exciting as the work being done at Monash University on ivermectin and its other potential applications. I think it's important to remember that ivermectin research that's being done is going to be groundbreaking and could lead to more manufacturing and more manufacturing jobs. Back in Mackay—

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