Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The home. Gee, I'm being verballed by the Deputy Speaker! But it is also the home of the Bushmaster, and what a great Australian manufacturing success story the Bushmaster is. Indeed, how many troops has that saved—not just Australians, but across the world. That is something that we should be very proud of. I was pleased to hear the member for Chisholm be optimistic and enthusiastic, and I hope that is infectious in her side, in the government. I hope it runs through to the Treasury and particularly to the Treasurer, the member for Rankin, because I think all too often he has been guilty of talking down our economy, and we need to talk up what we do here in Australia, certainly when it comes to manufacturing.

I'm interested in the member for Cunningham's private members' motion, where she talks about implementing a national rail manufacturing plan. Well, you've come to the right person here because, as Deputy Prime Minister, I was the one who signed the intergovernmental agreements with the three state ministers to get inland rail up, off the laptop and onto the track. Indeed, the first one was with Jacinta Allan—you would know her well, Deputy Speaker Chesters—and that was a great meeting. I had a good relationship with her, and I still do. She wanted to get on with the job of inland rail; so did Mark Bailey in Queensland and the then minister in New South Wales. We signed those three intergovernmental agreements. As I say, two of them were with Labor states. We got on with the job because we cooperated, and people wanted to see that cooperation.

This motion, and some of what I've heard from those opposite, reminds me a bit of the Yes Minister episode where they were talking about the success of the health system, the episode in which they were praising the best-performing hospital in England. Indeed it was, and it had 500 administrative staff yet no patients. They were saying, 'It's a great hospital; it's so efficient.' Yes, but it had no patients! They were trying to convince the minister that it wasn't such a success story, because it had no people receiving treatment.

What we don't want to see is this Labor government talking up manufacturing, having sent all the manufacturing overseas because of reckless energy policies making it too costly to do business here. That is my great fear—that it will be too costly to make things here in Australia.

I want to of see more Bushmasters built. I want to see more processing plants in agriculture and in all sorts of things. I know the RDA estimates the manufacturing industry in my own electorate of Riverina supports 7,988 jobs. I want to see more jobs! I know there are 80,000 vacancies in regional Australia at the moment. I want to see them filled. Many of those nearly 8,000 jobs are in manufacturing. We grow the world's best food and fibre. We have so much opportunity with the inland rail, with those special activation precincts that have been put in place, particularly by the New South Wales coalition government. I want to see those fully explored, exploited, enhanced and worked upon such that we can have more manufacturing jobs.

The challenge is there, the opportunity is there and the obligation is there for those opposite to make sure that they do everything they can to bring energy costs down. If they don't, it's going to be like the hospital in England which had no patients and was written up as such a success story in the minister's office. We're going to have members opposite talking about the success story of manufacturing: 'It's such a success story, but we've got nobody working in there, because we've sent it all overseas.'

This is a huge thing. Energy is going to play a big part in the future success or otherwise of our manufacturing industry, with businesses such as Flipscreen in Wagga. I know we gave generously as a coalition government. The coalition provided $2.5 billion to create the Modern Manufacturing Strategy. Those opposite need to not only talk that up; they also need to enhance it. Most importantly, they need to bring energy costs down so that we can help manufacturing create opportunities and create more employment, particularly in regional Australia.

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