Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposite can laugh at that! They want an enterprise agreement with unions as a precondition to any application. Isn't it funny how, as soon as a member of the coalition mentions the word 'unions', they arc up on the other side? Isn't that funny? Under this scheme, the government wants a requirement that applicants commit to direct employment or, at least, direct employment conditions. Yet the Prime Minister still hasn't ruled out mandating union board members and union agreements as a condition of entry into the fund. He could easily do that; he could just rule it out and say, 'No, that's not what we're after.' This is mandated unionism enshrined in law for Australian manufacturers who just want the backing of their government. Compulsory unionism for start-ups and small businesses will rob them of their unique selling points—their ability to innovate, their agility, their capacity to pivot as the market and as technology requires it. Far from the objects and purposes of this act, it will have a crippling impact on manufacturing.

When we were in government, we outlined six core manufacturing priorities after significant consultation with industry, academia and across levels of government. These six areas were food and beverage, medical products, clean energy, critical minerals and resources, defence manufacturing, and space industry. We invested $1.5 billion into the landmark modern manufacturing strategy to cultivate manufacturing sectors in these six priority areas.

I've taken a personal interest in the defence manufacturing priority area as part of my commitment to back small businesses and local manufacturers on the Sunshine Coast. I think of the $47.4 million that the previous federal government invested to enable manufacturing generators for the ADF's protected mobility vehicles like the Bushmasters, which are now being used in active combat in Ukraine. I think of the Sunshine Coast's share of the $103 Advanced Defence Aerospace Manufacturing Network, with firms like HeliMods delivering the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, the first combat aircraft to be built in Australia in over 50 years, which I had the privilege of again seeing at Avalon just last week.

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