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

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House declines to give the bill a second reading, and:

(1) notes:

(a) the failure of billions of dollars of the Government's Future Made in Australia spending to meet the standards and processes laid out in this Bill and the significant integrity concerns around these investments;

(b) the Government's Future Made in Australia policy has been criticised by many eminent economists including the Productivity Commission's Danielle Wood; former Productivity Commissioner Gary Banks; Australian National University visiting fellow Steven Hamilton; and University of New South Wales' Professor Richard Holden; and

(c) this policy does not make up for the Government's failures on economic management that are driving up the costs of manufacturing and have caused a tripling of manufacturing insolvencies since June 2022; and

(2) calls on the Government to get Australia's economy back on track and back to basics by fighting inflation and reducing wasteful spending, reducing complexity and red tape for business, supporting affordable, reliable energy, and delivering lower, simpler, fairer taxes".

The coalition will oppose this bill. The more we learn about this plan, the more it simply doesn't stack up. This is a plan for pork-barrelling, not the Australian economy. It's a plan for more government, not more business investment. It's a plan for more inflation at a time when Labor is already making its homegrown inflation worse. This country has a proud and strong manufacturing industry and history, and the coalition has always supported it. Indeed, at a very personal level, I spent much of my career before coming into this place working in our manufacturing sectors—in the steel industry in aluminium smelting, in refining and in food processing. I learned, from working in all of those sectors for decades—

those opposite should show some respect—that this is an incredibly important sector for this nation. I was proud to work with this sector as industry minister, saving the Portland smelter, saving the Viva Energy refinery down in Melbourne, and saving the Ampol refinery in Brisbane. These were important issues we took, and we saw, as a result, a strong sector during that time. Sadly, since then, we've seen some big steps backwards. We've lost a refinery in Kwinana. We're losing businesses at a rate of knots in this country right now—19,000 insolvencies, record levels of insolvencies we are seeing in this country right now, businesses small and large. We see Nickel West leaving in Western Australia. We see serious questions about lithium mining over in Western Australia right now, and those opposite should pay attention to what is going on right now in the manufacturing sector in this country.

The message I would convey to all—and this was the main thing I learned in my decades working in these sectors, before politics, was that you have to get the basics right. You have to get back to basics and get those basics right. And what are they? Affordable, reliable energy. You cannot run an aluminium smelter unless you have affordable, reliable energy. It's the same with an aluminium refinery and with any metal processing or food processing. Affordable, reliable energy is not negotiable. Flexible workplaces—you have to be able to allow workers and employers to sit down together and work out what is good for the employees and good for the employer at the same time. If you cannot do that, you cannot compete. These are tough industries, and they go to other countries if we are not able to remain competitive. If we do, it's good for workers and it's good for employers. That means we have to have a tax system, too, that is right for these industries.

The policies we have seen from those opposite on energy, on industrial relations, on red tape and on approvals are all making Australia a less attractive place to do business. As I said, we see insolvencies up and productivity down. We've never seen a drop in labour productivity like we've seen since those opposite came to power: over five per cent. The truth is that that affects everybody's prosperity. The results are clear: our standard of living, our real household disposable incomes, have fallen by eight per cent since those opposite came to power. The real wages of working families, based on the employee living cost index, are down nine per cent.

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