Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that interjection. I absolutely accept it. The best path to get back to basics and to get the fundamentals right is to get the fundamentals right. That's the way we should be proceeding here, and it's not the way this is proceeding. BCA president Bran Black has said:

Our competitors (think Canada, the US, and across Asia) are more investment-friendly environments based on old-fashioned fundamentals like … regulation—

like good regulation, that is. He went on:

To reinvent our economy we must, as a point of national urgency, become a more competitive place to do business.

That's getting the basics right.

The Productivity Commission says a billion-dollar commitment to make more solar panels in Australia under Anthony Albanese's Future Made in Australia program should be retrospectively subjected to a tougher National Interest Framework test. It said:

Allowing sectors to bypass the NIF process would undermine its role in disciplining spending.

Yet Labor are already breaking their own rules when it suits them. This is the extraordinary thing: they create the rules and then proceed to ignore them. Key elements of Labor's MIA agenda include the $22.7 billion PsiQuantum contract, which bypassed the National Interest Framework and sector assessments. They haven't taken any notice of it. There are serious questions to answer about the decision to make this investment, with it being increasingly clear that the Minister for Industry and Science's decision to invest in this business was independent of any departmental appraisal, analysis or recommendation. That's how it proceeds. It looks suspiciously like crony capitalism to me, I have to say.

Treasury were not consulted prior to the decision to invest in solar manufacturing, and their subsequent analysis has said that it is not a sound investment. That's what Treasury said. The Productivity Commission was not consulted on the details of the proposed investments prior to their announcements, and we're already seeing that the policy is not effective. The Solar SunShot program has been refused backing by the Treasurer's own secretary, with the main proponent of the policy, who stood alongside the Prime Minister as he announced the initiative, cutting back its staff and replacing their CEO. Already it's falling to pieces. Fortescue—the biggest booster of green hydrogen, which is the target of the program—is scaling back its ambitions for green hydrogen already. It's true it was billions for billionaires, but the billionaire is handing it back. He's decided he doesn't want it.

Labor's production credits are failing to deliver for the struggling nickel industry. I mentioned Nickel West earlier. It's very sad to see what we're seeing with Nickel West right now. What's very clear is that this policy is not making any difference whatsoever.

It's not just the coalition raising serious concerns here. As I said, the Productivity Commission's Danielle Wood, the government's key economic adviser, who was appointed by the Treasurer, has said:

If we are supporting industries that don't have a long-term competitive advantage, that can be an ongoing cost. It diverts resources, that's workers and capital, away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high value uses.

We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and that can be very effective in coming back for more.

I'm sure they'll come back for more. Wood also said:

Your infants grow up, they turn into very hungry teenagers, and it's kind of hard to turn off the tap.

Danielle Wood is not alone. The former Productivity Commissioner, Gary Banks, described the MIA policy as a 'fool's errand' that risks repeating mistakes of the past by propping up 'political favourites'. I think 'political favourites' is generous. He goes on to say:

Seeking to obtain benefits to society through subsidies for particular firms or industries, including in the form of tax concessions, has proven a fool's errand, particularly where the competitive fundamentals are lacking.

Gary Banks likened the scheme to the song 'Hotel California', saying 'many will enter the program, but few will ever leave.'

In response to this, the Prime Minister called Mr Banks 'a flat earther'. Banks is a highly respected former public servant in this nation who has served this nation in an extraordinary way. I don't think he deserved that kind of label. Another eminent economist, Professor Richard Holden, defended Mr Banks, saying that the insult was 'wrong and uncalled for'. He went on to say, 'The PM says all the wrong things.' He's quite right about that. The PM says all the wrong things. Holden said:

His main argument for subsidies is that other countries are doing it. Like a primary school kid telling to a teacher 'but he started it'.

Another economist, Steven Hamilton said:

There are many problems with industry policy and this is a big one. It's why I tend to favour more neutral investment incentives like a lower corporate tax rate or accelerated depreciation.

We've been supportive of accelerated depreciation on this side of this place. Hamilton goes on to say:

I thought we'd learned these lessons, but apparently not. The bad old days are back.

Hamilton then talks about comparisons with the US IRA, saying:

That is a totally different proposition to doing so in Australia. Without a large domestic market, exports are the only way for Australia to achieve scale. But we are so far away from the kinds of markets we could sell into, that shipping costs put us at a distinct disadvantage. No amount of government subsidy is going to get around that.

I could keep on quoting. Even the AMWU—you would have thought they'd been pretty supportive of Labor as the dominant left faction union and a source of talent for Labor in parliament—don't want Treasury to have a central role in the Future Made in Australia. They believe Treasury has 'limited expertise'. That reflects my comments earlier.

We know the way forward for our manufacturing sector. The success we all want to see is absolutely getting back to basics, getting inflation under control and getting the cost of doing business under control—just as it's so essential to get the cost of living under control in this country. That means we have to make sure that we have a fiscal strategy in this country that takes pressure off inflation. Yet the first thing this Treasurer did in his first budget was to get rid of the fiscal strategy that had been in place since the 1990s. It was a fiscal strategy put in place by Peter Costello, and Wayne Swan didn't even get rid of it, but the current Treasurer did.

Secondly, we will wind back Labor's regulatory roadblocks and interventions, which are suffocating business and the economy, stopping businesses from getting ahead. This is in areas like approvals. We know approvals are absolutely essential to having a strong manufacturing and mining sector in this country.

Thirdly, we will remove the complexity and hostility of Labor's industrial relations agenda, which is putting unreasonable burdens on businesses. We see they're moving into the Pilbara. I have to say, the Pilbara is a place where you have the very highest paid and most productive workers in the world. It's extraordinary what's been achieved up there by those businesses and their workers over many years. Labor has said, 'No. We're going to send in the union officials. They're going to make it better.' The most competitive industry in this country and the most competitive mining industry in the world, and the union officials are moving in. Well, we don't think that's the way to strengthen our economy and create higher real wages for workers and create opportunities for all Australians.

Fourth, we will provide simpler, lower and fairer taxes for all, including for small business. Accelerated depreciation is a very key policy for us and for small businesses in this country. Fifth, we will deliver competition policy that gives consumers and small businesses a fair go, not lobbyists and big corporations. Finally, we will focus on delivering affordable, reliable energy to all Australians. This is essential for our manufacturing sector. This is essential for ourselves.

There is a better way. The Labor Party's MIA bill is not the way forward. It will not create a prosperous, strong manufacturing sector that will create jobs and opportunities for Australians across this great nation. That is not the way forward. There is a better way forward. We will continue to put that way forward. That is embedded in the amendment that I have just circulated in my name.

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