Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to express my disappointment in the federal budget: specifically, the lack of focus on developing small manufacturing businesses in Australia.

When many of us think about manufacturing, we imagine large, cavernous warehouses involving heavy industry. But manufacturing is not a particular sector; it is in fact a capability. My own electorate of Fowler is replete with manufacturers. More than 600 of them manufacture products, from food and building materials to medical supplies and products for the recycling industry. Manufacturing is the largest employer in my electorate, employing 40 per cent of the population compared to 5.9 per cent nationally. For smaller manufacturing companies to grow and develop into globally competitive markets, they need investment. They need government to remove obstacles like red tape, tax burdens and the crippling energy prices they have faced under this government. And there's the shortage of Australians with the necessary skills, as well as the inflation that has wiped out often years of hard work.

The insulting few dollars per year for spiking electricity bills for small businesses is not going to fix these problems. Nor is the $20,000 instant asset write-off going to lead to a sudden boom in manufacturing in Fowler, or anywhere else. We need better; we deserve better. The one-billion-dollar publicly funded initiative to establish an entire solar supply chain in Australia, spun as a step towards creating a manufacturing base for solar products, needs to be questioned. Is it a prudent move or a waste of public money, better spent elsewhere? Our current domestic solar efforts are just assembly lines for—guess what?—Chinese products. That is not manufacturing. To manufacture solar panels we would need to build the entire chain, or at least meaningful parts thereof, making polysilicon wafers and cells that would make up Australian-made panels. To do this we would need to invest not just one billion dollars but rather $10 billion to $20 billion. And that's before we find any customers or try to compete with China.

Industry spokespeople tell me that the government is pretty much on the back foot when it comes to nurturing our domestic industry, and that not a single dollar has been released from the National Reconstruction Fund. The NRF was part of the October 2022 federal budget, with an allocation of $15 billion to rebuild Australia's industrial base. How can we believe the government when not a single dollar has been released in almost two years since that was in the federal budget? The requirements of the NRF regarding the shares of equity within those businesses make it almost impossible for any small business to be able to secure this funding. One industry representative told me that businesses big enough to qualify for the fund would not even need to seek the funds in the first place.

The Industry Growth Program, the IGP, was established to support innovative small to medium enterprises. I'm told by industry representatives that the IGP has been inundated with applications but that, again, no money has gone out to small businesses in the two years since its fanfare announcement. In business, time is money, and inbuilt delays in acquiring funding render such assistance useless. The experiences of the IGP and the NRF do not fill me with confidence that the Future Made in Australia plan will do much, if anything, to develop the small businesses in Australia that are so vital if we are to compete globally in manufacturing or any other capability. It makes me wonder whether this has been designed only to benefit larger manufacturing businesses that are heavily staffed and influenced by the unions. Are Labor looking after their union bosses at the expense of the Aussie battler?

I am of the view that the government has not fully grasped the importance of boosting our local manufacturing businesses, businesses that give jobs to Australians and grow the economy. Manufacturing more products is our surest way out of the inflation caused by governments spending money like water and the resulting economic stagnation.

In principle, I share the aspiration of a future made in Australia, but I want more than statements of intent; I want delivery. I welcome the intention to offer 80,000 fee-free TAFE courses under the NRF to address skilled labour shortages, but I will be watching closely to make sure that this delivers the skills needed to change our assembly-line economy into a manufacturing one, rather than it being simply more money earmarked for new projects that goes into the bureaucracies of existing ones. If the government is genuinely committed to supporting growth in the manufacturing sector then I invite them to show us by developing advanced manufacturing in Western Sydney.

See this speech in context