Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor are the builders, with the Housing Australia Future Fund that passed this chamber last night and this morning, cheaper child care, cheaper medicine, paid family and domestic violence leave, and this legislation, the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill, as well. Labor government has a great tradition, from the days of Andrew Fisher with the old-age pension and disability pension, new workers rights, the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank, expanding the Australian Navy and formally establishing what we now call the ACT. There was Chifley with postwar migration, establishing Australian citizenship, the beginning of the construction of the Snowy Mountains scheme and implementing improvements in social security. There was Whitlam with legal aid, arts funding, trade practice and family law reform, equal pay for women, universal health care and opening up universities to every Australian, based on merit. There was Hawke and Keating, with Medicare and superannuation, and Rudd and Gillard, with NBN and the NDIS. This government, the Albanese Labor government, is doing so much in that fine Labor tradition.

I want to speak today on the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill. One of the big lessons of the pandemic was that so much of our production and imports were dependent on just one country, which left us massively exposed to supply chain vulnerabilities, compounding the botched vaccine rollout by the previous government. COVID also highlighted that many other manufacturers are struggling to be globally competitive, especially when it comes to innovation and technology. At the time, Labor in opposition said we could do better and that we needed to rebuild jobs and our industrial base.

Australians recognise that we have to be a country that makes things again and we have to do it better. Modern economies need a strong manufacturing capability. That manufacturing matters because it generates full-time, secure, well-paid jobs. Just as former Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley had a vision for postwar reconstruction, the Albanese Labor government has a vision for our post-pandemic recovery and prosperity.

This legislation establishes the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, delivering on a key Labor election commitment. It's a major nationbuilding fund and, in the tradition of Labor governments, one of the largest peacetime investments in our country's manufacturing capability in recent times. It will help drive economic development in our regions and outer suburbs, in places like Ipswich and surrounds, boosting our sovereign capability, transforming and diversifying industry and, more importantly, helping to create high-skilled, high-paid jobs.

The NRF will grow advanced manufacturing and revive our ability to make world-class products. It will be governed by a corporation with an independent board modelled on the very highly successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which the previous Labor government introduced and which the coalition spent years trying to abolish. It will be empowered to co-invest in projects through a combination of loans, guarantees and equities, institutional investors, private equity and venture capital. It will achieve a return on investment to cover borrowings, costs and an expected positive underlying cash impact. It's not about picking winners; it's about strategically investing in industries of the future, leveraging our natural strengths and competitive advantages, as many other countries are doing. It's designed to create private sector investment and address market failure by derisking propositions that would otherwise be passed over by the private sector at a time of global uncertainty, when there has been a dearth of venture capital.

To that extent, the NRF will help drive innovation in technology and better collaboration between science and industry, ensuring Australian-made discoveries can be commercialised and scaled at home, rather than having to go offshore. The fund will make some pretty strategic investments in a number of priority areas, including value-adding in resources, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, transport, medical science, renewables and low-emissions technologies, defence capabilities and emerging technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It is worth noting that world-leading scientific agency CSIRO, which we value deeply in this country, has played a role in identifying these areas as offering the best chances for jobs and growth in their paper COVID-19: recovery and resilience.

I am pleased to say that many of these changes will benefit my electorate of Blair in south-east Queensland. The resource industry is a major industry and employer in Queensland, my home state. It's not all about coal and gas, as some have suggested. The National Reconstruction Fund will have a strong focus on critical minerals, which are becoming increasingly important strategically as a pathway to energy transition. We want to see more minerals processed domestically, like lithium and graphene, providing for batteries and other materials. An example of that is a manufacturing group based in Richlands in the Speaker's electorate of Oxley, just next to mine, that is experimenting with developing graphene batteries that charge 70 times faster and with three times the battery life of lithium batteries.

Agriculture is a big industry in the electorate of Blair, including horticulture, dairy, beef cattle and meat processing. It is a big employer in my electorate and its surrounds. In fact, my first job was as a cleaner at the meatworks for Dinmore, based in Ipswich, now owned by JBS. I have kangaroo meat processing at Wulkuraka. There is beef meat processing in Kilcoy, at Coominya, as well as in Dinmore. I'm pleased the fund will look at opportunities, for example, in high-end food manufacturing and processing. If you go to these plants you will see the creative and innovative methods these meat processing operations use, and there are opportunities for growth in the industry by getting apprentices in to learn more about the industry. It is really good. I have met with so many people who have benefited, from school all the way through. It certainly won't destroy native forests. It's all about making sure that we look at high-end production.

Transport is another area in my state of Queensland with strong manufacturing capabilities. The state government has announced Downer as the preferred supplier to build new trains at Maryborough in regional Queensland, where my mother's family comes from, in the member for Wide Bay's electorate, no less. Nearly half of all manufacturing jobs are in areas such as this.

Additionally, medical science is a really fast-growing industry in my electorate. For example, Springfield Citigroup in Ipswich have been working with a range of partners to develop the Springfield BioPark, an innovation precinct dedicated to advanced manufacturing of high-value medicines like vaccines and blood products. This is an exciting initiative and has enormous potential to boost the local biotech industry and jobs into the future. It will also boost Australia's sovereign capability for medical manufacturing and improve access to life-saving drugs, which will support our future pandemic preparedness. I am working closely with Springfield Citigroup on delivering an election commitment of $12.6 million in that regard.

I can reassure those who may be sceptical of this fund of the remit of the fund, which invests in a range of renewable energies and clean energy technologies like components for wind turbines, batteries and solar panels, which is where we think this fund will go.

Again, Australia has some of the world's largest deposits of critical minerals, which are shipped and used in battery manufacturing and supply chains overseas. But we don't make enough batteries in this country. A great case study in this space is a company called Vast Solar based in Goodna, Ipswich, just outside my electorate, which is developing dispatchable solar thermal battery technology. In fact, ARENA, another organisation that those opposite would have done their best to abolish but Labor opposed, has just backed the firm with a grant to build a commercial solar thermal power plant in Port Augusta, South Australia, which will bolster power supplies nation wide and create regional jobs. The fund could also support more success stories like Vast Solar for domestic battery manufacturing, which will combine Australian-sourced minerals, Australian know-how and skills to power the clean energy transition, here and around the world. Three million dollars will be allocated from the fund to invest in green metals, steel, aluminium, and clean energy component manufacturing like hydrogen, electrolyser and fuel switching, agricultural methane reduction and waste reduction, so many things that will help us in the transition.

Finally, the defence industry is another key employer in Ipswich and surrounds. Its proximity to the RAAF base at Amberley and access to a high-skilled defence workforce are critical. We have great organisations and great companies, like Boeing and TAE and Rheinmetall, in the Ipswich region, just to name a few. These priority areas will drive future economic growth, both nationally and locally in my electorate. Ipswich and Brisbane's western corridor is one of the fastest growing areas in the country, so we need to be investing now in these areas and in the high skilled, well-paid jobs of the future.

The National Reconstruction Fund will not only have a strong focus on helping transition industries to net zero emissions to address climate change emergencies but will also look at a whole range of other areas which I have outlined. It is important the bill be passed as soon as possible so the fund can be up and running from 1 July. It's important this parliament does the right thing and supports the legislation. Those opposite are simply not builders. I listed the achievements of previous Labor governments, and so many of those things were not supported by those opposite. They didn't vote for them or support them, and spent years trying to undo them. There was Medicare—when Bill Hayden brought in Medibank as the forerunner, Malcolm Fraser, the Prime Minister, abolished it and Bob Hawke had to bring it back in. Who can forget that famous ad on TV with Bob Hawke and the Medicare card going to the Lodge?

This legislation is in the great tradition of Labor building this nation—a party of reform and progress. Those opposite are the wreckers, the deniers and the naysayers. They're not the ones who build this nation; it's always left to Labor governments to do that. Those opposite oppose superannuation; there has not been a vote in this parliament in the over 15 years I've been here where those opposite have supported superannuation—not once! They have always voted to deny working Australians a decent retirement. And those opposite will not support this bill here today. They are opposed to it. It's always about denial and opposition, not about support for nation building. If you want to support manufacturing and jobs, you support bills like this and support reform.

It's not just about the fact that those opposite will never support a wage rise for workers in the workplace. They're always wanting a higher percentage of the profit to GDP to go to the rich and powerful in this country. They never support working-class people and people in the regions struggling. They'll never support a minimum wage rise; they can't even do that. They haven't got the grace to support this legislation, which will help jobs in manufacturing. They're happy to put the high-vis on and parade around in campaigns, put a bit of coaldust on their face and do what they like to do, but when it comes to casting a vote, or doing anything about it, they will not do it. We saw that with the Housing Australia Future Fund. The naysayers over there say they're in favour of helping veterans but don't vote for it. They say they're in favour of helping women and children fleeing domestic and family violence but don't vote for it. They say they're in favour of helping Aboriginal people in remote areas but don't vote for it. Question time after question time, there are questions about the cost of living index but when given the opportunity last year, in December, what did they do? They voted against it. Here, today, they've got a chance. Get up on your feet and support it. Support jobs in manufacturing. Support the jobs of the future. You claim you want to transition the economy into a clean energy future. How about you actually vote for it?

Remember the ring-a-ring-a-rosy, with a whole bunch of people there, when those opposite got into power and got rid of the price on carbon? They stood there and hugged each other, teaming up with the Greens. Once again, on bills like this—and we saw it last night. In this country you're either Labor or against Labor. In this country, it's Labor governments that make a difference. All those opposite will not do it. They will not support this legislation. They get up and protest because they're ideologues. They believe in an untrampled Milton Friedman type economy where the rich and powerful can look after themselves and everyone else can get lost. When they were in government, they punted people off the pensions I referred to that Andrew Fisher brought in—373,000 people in this country were punted.

This day they've got a chance. Show us your grace. Show us your integrity. Show us you will build this country for the better. Vote for this legislation.

See this speech in context