Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always a pleasure to talk on manufacturing in this place. I'm probably one of the few here who has stood, worked and maybe even sometimes sweated on a shop floor. I'm very happy to say I was the worst welder on that shop floor. I'm probably the best in this House, though. Times have changed.

To reflect on some of the comments in this conversation, watching that industry over a long time, most of my association was with the mining industry, but manufacturing played huge part in riding that great wave that happened in the early 2000s. The sad truth is that manufacturing in this country has been in a long decline, particularly as we've increased our engagement with Asia and we've seen the loss of those manufacturing jobs, over many governments. I don't think there's any evidence that really stands that it's one side or the other. That's been a long-term trend. So I always welcome a conversation about how we as Australians can return manufacturing back to these shores. As has been pointed out many times, and if the pandemic taught us anything, if there is one great thing we can take from it, it's the importance of self-reliance. If that's the great lesson we get out of it, that fantastic.

To speak on this particular bill, I think we should, as always, view it within the context of its times. Today we've just seen another interest rate rise. We're seeing in this period the steepest rate rises since the RBA became an independent institution. In the last three months of last year, we saw a slower economy than we expected. We're seeing confidence—not just consumer confidence, but business confidence—at a low. At the same time, we're seeing spending continue. So we're in a time of extreme turmoil, and today's Courier Mail relates the increase in costs for the average Queensland family over the last 12 months: they have risen by $1,150. Some of the comments in there were quite strong. You're seeing families make decisions about whether kids continue with swimming lessons, whether holidays are continued. We're in a period now where pressures are being felt, and they are being felt very strongly.

They are being felt in families as well as businesses. I'm very lucky in my patch to have quite a strong manufacturing sector. We support, obviously, our traditional agricultural industries but also the newer industries that have come to our region, particularly transport, and that will only increase as Inland Rail comes. As I'll get to, we are also getting more and more into defence. Every time I sit and talk with our manufacturing industries, be they large or small, they have two issues they'd like to see addressed. One is energy costs. Quite simply, for many of our manufacturers, this has become the driving cost in their decision making. The other is, of course, labour costs.

To look at this piece of legislation within the context of what's happening throughout the rest of the government's policies—Deputy Speaker Goodenough, you may enjoy this—I made a trip into the record books, looking at the impact of price caps historically. Obviously, this government has embarked on that pathway. I couldn't find the earliest possible example but there is a great one from 301 AD. I won't pretend to know this myself. It's under Diocletian 301 AD. They brought price caps in in ancient Rome because things were getting a bit too hot. Prices were too high, and wages weren't high enough. That particular piece of intervention went the way that, surprisingly, every other piece of price cap interventionist policy has gone; it failed, and failed terribly.

When I talk to my manufacturing sector and they raise the issue of energy costs, they look at what we know: when you have price caps, you have a restriction of supply; it follows. It will only ever drive up costs in the longer term. We have that sitting in front of people. Then there's labour costs and they are to be driven up. If we look at the IR legislation that went through the House and if we reflect on the comments from the Productivity Commission report, when you move people from individual agreements to enterprise-level agreements, you see a reduction in productivity. Understand what that loss of productivity means to a company that's already borderline, that's on the one hand weighing up energy costs and on the other hand looking at the impact of R legislation coming through. These are the things weighing on people's minds.

In that context, if we turn to the solution provided by this legislation, there appears to be more union power. If you want to assess a piece of legislation, a good way to do it is to see who it makes happy. Many of the previous speakers have spoken to the long list of demands that unions have made, licking their lips at the prospect of what the NRF opens up to them. When we see this sort of intervention, when we see unions wanting to force enterprise agreements as a precondition for application, that makes small manufacturers very scared. When we see calls for a third of board positions are to be hand-picked by the Council of Trade Unions, you start to get a feel that these decisions are not always going to be made in the best public interest, which of course, public investment should be.

I will speak to the two points that the government have often raised in this debate. One is that this is great for regional jobs. As someone who represents a regional area, Groome in the beautiful Darling Downs, I hear that a lot from Labor. It is always important, when we talk about jobs, to look at the record of the previous government, because our approach to jobs worked. We saw near-record-low unemployment. In regions like mine, we saw businesses pick up, thrive. We saw activity grow. Those jobs were available, which was fantastic for regions like ours. I meant that our kids, the younger generation, didn't have to go elsewhere, didn't have to leave the regions to find work. There were jobs, careers, lifestyles to be had at home. That's the record we delivered on.

I would turn also then to—this will tie in a little here—the other point that's made around defence and how important this is for Australia's national security. Leave alone the fact that this wasn't raised when the bill was brought forward. This is something that was found down the track as a very important part of it but not initially. I have to ask the question: How do you cut space industry out of your priorities when you are having a conversation about national defence given where the world is now and the threats of hypersonic missiles, just as one? It's almost implausible to think that you could have a serious conversation on defence while leaving out space industries. The previous government did not. Under the modern manufacturing scheme, I was proud to fight for trailblazer funding for UNSEQ, located in Toowoomba in my patch, that made them a leader of Australian universities in space research. It's extraordinary, and I'll tie that back in with a comment about regional jobs.

If you're looking for somewhere that has regional jobs, we're the largest privately funded inland city in Australia, apart from Canberra, and we had this huge investment. On top of the investment that we got from that Trailblazer funding, we've seen Boeing make a significant investment there. We've also seen Virgin Galactic make significant investments in our patch. It's extraordinary. Twenty years ago, you would never have thought this, but Toowoomba has become a hub for space research. It's not just big companies coming in; it's local companies joining in and finding their way into that. It's great to hear that local manufacturing firm JRS Manufacturing Group is moving out to the Wellcamp aerospace district and investing in new technology there.

When we talk about this great investment under the previous government's Modern Manufacturing Initiative, which did identify the space industry as being important to defence and which did spur regional jobs, we're not just talking about jobs in the defence industry or in manufacturing. What we're also talking about is everything that goes with that, be it not only the business support services or the logistic services but the education stream that goes with it. I was very happy to be at UniSQ with Vice-Chancellor Geraldine Mackenzie just recently, where we were looking at the future that's being laid out for the space engineering program that they are pioneering at their Toowoomba campus. The opportunities that this offers young people from Toowoomba and from the regions is an absolutely crucial part of our future.

We understand that when we talk about regional jobs, we're talking about new industries. When we talk about manufacturing, we're not talking about the sort of manufacturing that used to take place when Labor had people who worked in manufacturing. We're talking about modern manufacturing. We're talking about technologies just like this space engineering—the incredible work that's taking place out there. We're focused on that. We understand that's where new investment needs to go. So I point to the record of the previous government. We did understand that this was important. We did invest in the space industry, and we did provide local jobs.

The next point I'll make is that, whilst we talk often about the space industry as it relates to defence, the same research and the same industry in a region like mine drives our other key industries forward. Of course, great work has been done in the agtech space in recent years, where we've seen farms being run out of the palms of people's hands, with technology and information coming through. This is where investments in manufacturing, properly timed and properly focused—and with an eye to the future—don't just help out the one industry that they're focused on but have a broader impact. Why it was so important for the Modern Manufacturing Fund to focus on space was not just because of defence but because of everything else that came out with it, be it logistics or agriculture. Certainly, my region was very happy to play a part in that.

I'll reinforce my earlier comments. This piece of legislation is fighting against other pieces of legislation that are currently in play in the drive to bring manufacturing back to Australia. This is at a time when we're seeing price caps which will have a negative effect—and which have already had a negative effect on future investment, as the Senex case proved. They will have that negative effect on prices for up to two, three, five, 10 and 15 years down the track, because we will see a reduction in supply. This is fighting against that legislation at the same time as we're seeing legislation like Labor's IR bill, which is deliberately designed to move employees onto agreements that deliver lower productivity. Once again, we're seeing this legislation fighting against other legislation that is currently in play.

It baffles the mind that when you speak to the industry, when you speak about their concerns, their concerns are only too clear. When we speak to those in the manufacturing industry about their concerns, we understand their need for lower energy prices and for lower labour costs. But the solution provided is a mechanism for more power for unions in this space. I don't speak against unions on the basis that they are simply unions, I speak against any monopoly that tries to exert too much power—and I fear that's exactly what this legislation opens up the opportunity for. Small manufacturers, like HBS, where I first learnt to weld, would struggle under the increased union power that legislation like this would enable.

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