Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

and we all know the outcome of that story. An astounding 40,000 car-manufacturing workers lost their jobs. I'll take the interjection from the honourable member that it was half a billion. Well, losing 40,000 car-manufacturing workers is pretty significant. Having all those high-tech jobs is pretty important. When we have a pandemic and we face an uncertain future, it's important to have sovereign manufacturing so that we can make things like electric vehicles and other high-tech pieces of kit—maybe even guided missiles, which we may need to protect the homeland in the future. So much was lost. So, as I said, in hindsight it was a paltry amount. Most countries around the world subsidise car manufacturing because they're smart and understand how important 40,000 car-manufacturing jobs are.

This government believes in the future of the Australian manufacturing industry. That's why we're delivering the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund. It's a key platform to support, diversify and transform Australia's industry and to create sustainable, well-paid jobs. The fund will provide finance, including loans, guarantees and equity, to drive investments in seven priority areas of the Australian economy. These will leverage Australia's natural and competitive strengths to support the development of strategically important industries, to shore up our supply chains and, as I said, to make more things here.

The first of the seven priority areas is to value-add in resources. We need to do that. For so long we've just shipped our resources offshore. This fund will expand Australia's mining, science and technology and ensure a greater share of the raw materials that are extracted are processed domestically. This could include high-purity alumina from red mud in bauxite processing or lithium processing for batteries.

The second priority is to value-add in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector. This, too, will unlock potential and value-add to raw materials in sectors like food processing—and we're doing a deep dive on food processing, in the aquaculture area, in our fisheries in the Northern Territory at the moment—textiles, clothing and footwear, and manufacturing. My mum's first job was with a bootmaker in Melbourne, but it's been a long time since we manufactured footwear. We could be doing a lot more of it again with smart technology and a bit of support.

Priority area No. 3 is transport. The fund will develop capabilities in transport manufacturing and supply chains, including for cars and trains and in shipbuilding. I would add aircraft building to that. Certainly in Darwin, in my electorate of Solomon, we are going to be manufacturing amphibious aircraft into the future. We've got the first one in the hangar right now and we've got orders coming in from overseas. The ability to take off and land on water is very handy when the Indo-Pacific includes the two large bodies of water, those being the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, not to mention all the seas that surround our island nation.

Medical science is the fourth priority. We've got some world-leading researchers, and we want to back them so they can provide, here in our own nation, essential supplies such as medical devices, personal protective equipment, medicines and vaccines. We saw during the pandemic that we couldn't get hand sanitiser or masks when we needed them in those early days. I congratulate the Australian companies that quickly got their own ability to produce face masks, for example, up and running. We need to be able to produce our own medical instruments, our own PPE, our own medicines and our own vaccines.

No. 5 is renewables and low-emissions technologies. Again, we've got some of the best and brightest people. Everyone knows the shame, the missed opportunity that was seeing some of our best solar technicians go overseas when they couldn't get the funding to commercialise their brilliance. That's what it was—Australian ingenuity and brilliance in those researchers and scientists. They felt compelled to pursue this, but the funding wasn't available here, so they went overseas. We won't let that happen again. We'll address the brain drain we've had by providing opportunities here so that those brilliant Australia minds will stay and so that we can attract brilliant minds from overseas who want to come to Australia, where there are skills shortages.

This fund will facilitate more funding into these high-end manufacturing renewable industries, like components for wind turbines, as we see wind farming accelerate around our nation. The production of batteries and solar panels—I've been talking to companies that want to do that in Middle Arm, just outside my electorate, in the member for Lingiari's electorate. That Middle Arm precinct is going to be part of this big move towards us having renewable technologies produced right here in Australia, aided and assisted by this fund. We're also an agricultural country, and new livestock feed will reduce methane emissions, which is incredibly important. We also make steel, though not as much as we used to, and we're modernising steel and aluminium. Hydrogen electrolysers are so important for green hydrogen of the future. Again, some of that will be happening in the north. Innovative packaging solutions will reduce waste, and we do have a sincere and genuine commitment to the circular economy—less waste, smarter tech and recycling more and more.

No. 6 is defence capability. The fund will maximise sourcing of requirements from Australian suppliers, employing Australian workers, whether they be in technology, infrastructure or skills. Making more of our capability here is incredibly important, not only from a sovereignty point of view but for us to be assured of our supply chains in times of strategic competition—hopefully not war; we'll be doing everything we can to avoid that, but if it does come to that, we want to make sure that our supply chains operate within our nation and that as much as possible of what our Defence Force uses to defend our nation can come from within. That's just smart.

No. 7 is enabling capabilities. This fund will support key enabling capabilities across engineering, data science and software development, including areas such as AI, robotics and quantum mechanics.

Our government has previously announced target investment levels for specific priority areas within the fund. For the information of honourable members and members of the public listening, we're talking about $3 billion for renewables and low-emission technologies; $1½ billion for medical manufacturing; $1 billion for value adding in resources, which is absolutely essential; $1 billion for critical technologies; $1 billion for advanced manufacturing; and half a billion for value adding in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and fibre, which is as important for emissions reduction as it is for food security and growing our ag sector and aquaculture sector.

The National Reconstruction Fund will target projects and investments that help Australia capture new, high-value market opportunities to help our Aussie businesses and the international businesses that work in Australia employ Australians to grow and succeed now in our economy of today but also in the high-technology economy we're building for tomorrow. This includes fund financing, advance manufacturing and supporting of businesses to innovate as they move up the technological ladder. Moving up that ladder is so absolutely vital. There's no way for us to compete in the world if we don't climb that technological ladder. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about traditional primary industries or the high-tech part of our economy; it all has to move up the innovation ladder. It all has to move and advance up that technological ladder if we're going to compete and be successful. That's why this fund's so important.

As a co-investment fund, the National Reconstruction Fund looks to draw in investment support from super, from venture capital and from private equity sources, getting that investment to help create high-quality sustainable industries and jobs for Australians. That's why it's so important. As for its structure and governance, investment powers will be restricted to set priority areas. These will be determined jointly by the Minister for Industry and Science and the Minister for Finance in a legislative instrument.

There's so much more I could say about this fund but time is against me. I want to make clear to those listening that our government is committed to making renewables and low-emission technologies one of the key areas, but we also recognise that traditional primary industries will benefit as well and absolutely need to innovate, to develop for themselves, for the future, so they can stay competitive. That's what we're committed to doing and that's what this fund will facilitate.

I sincerely hope that those opposite support this. I hope that the crossbench supports this. It's essential for our nation's future. It's essential for our nation's security. On that basis, I very much support it.

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