Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must say I was looking forward, genuinely, to hearing what the minister had to say. Normally when we have to sit and wait, it's a backbencher that repeats the talking points—you could hear them from anyone. I thought it would be interesting to see the minister spend 15 minutes talking about the Future Made in Australia and their plan for the resources industry. What was interesting was the time allocation. We heard around three, maybe four minutes—if we're generous—of talking about the government and then about 12 minutes of talking about the opposition. That in many ways sums up the Albanese Labor government. After spending 20 of the last 30 years in opposition, they're institutionalised to opposition. They continue to talk about us. The member for Parramatta is new. He's been lucky enough to be in government for two years; he's okay. I see him laughing over on the other side. I think he did work at a senior level in the former Labor government, so he's had a good run. But many others—the senior leaders, the Prime Minister and others—continue to talk about the opposition. The Minister for Resources could not spend 15 minutes outlining the positive plan that the Albanese Labor government has for the resources sector or for this Future Made in Australia policy. That says a lot.

This bill, like many others, follows a very typical Labor formula. I spoke about this when I spoke about the National Reconstruction Fund and also the Housing Australia Future Fund. This bill hasn't let me down. It's followed the four tried-and-true steps of the Albanese Labor government when it comes to be policy announcements. Step 1: you need the impressive-sounding name. 'Future Made in Australia' is very impressive; no-one would disagree with a name like that. Step 2: you need a lot of money over a long period of time, so it is outside of the forward estimates because then the Treasurer, as the member for Parramatta knows, can shift the budget a little bit because we report only on four years and, if we talk about 10 years, it sounds very impressive. With $22.7 billion—tick—we follow that. The member for Parramatta will appreciate step 3 as well. You need to include off-budget spending—

He agrees with me! You need to include off-budget spending because the beauty of including off-budget spending is that the Treasurer can stand up and talk about being economically responsible even though they've committed over $45 billion into off-budget spending since coming to government. The reason he can pretend to be economically responsible is in the name. It doesn't sit in the budget. But guess what. The Australian people, the taxpayers that have to repay that $45 billion in debt that adds to the structural deficit—the real structural deficit, not that pretend budget one—have to pay that money back. That $45 billion also drives inflation, as Michele Bullock, the RBA governor, knows. This bill includes the National Reconstruction Fund so—tick—we've got our off-budget spending.

The fourth point is a real lack of detail in the bill, which, as the Minister for Resources, who just spent four minutes talking about the bill, shows—even the Treasurer's speech, which I thought I would read again, had no detail about what was actually in the bill other than his spin and talking points he does so well.

The real danger to this bill is that this is giving the government the opportunity to pick winners. I want to talk about an actual example of what has happened already under the Future Made in Australia fund. There has been over $400 million—$970 million if you include the Queensland government investment—into quantum. That's part of the Future Made in Australia plan. But let's actually talk about PsiQuantum and the process that this government undertook. The first thing we should know about PsiQuantum is that they're actually based in Silicon Valley. The last time I checked, Silicon Valley is in the United States, not in Australia. The second thing we should know about PsiQuantum is that they've got some good supporters, Brookline Advisory is the lobbyist for PsiQuantum, on the record. The two principals of Brookline Advisory are a former chief of staff to the now Minister for Defence and Deputy Prime Minister and a former senior adviser to the Treasurer. Those connections came in handy.

Let's go through the timeline of PsiQuantum and what's happened around this process. This is an important process to understand because, if it's happened in quantum, it can happen with every other initiative under the Future Made in Australia brand. The Minister for Industry and Science met with PsiQuantum between 1 and 31 December 2022. On 25 January 2023, Minister Husic travelled to the PsiQuantum headquarters in Silicon Valley. On 26 April—this is very important and very convenient—PsiQuantum registered as a company in Australia based in Brisbane. Then, amazingly, by pure coincidence, on 3 May 2023, Minister Husic released the National Quantum Strategy. Lucky they registered just a week before that was announced! I wonder how they knew that was going to happen.

This is where it gets really murky. We now know, through Senate estimates and FOIs, that Postquantum was engaging with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources for months, doing due diligence. There was $7 million spent on external advice in early 2023, directly looking at Postquantum, from the department of industry. In August 2023, there was an EOI process sent out to Australia based quantum companies and 21 applied. When this EOI was sent out, many in the quantum industry were so concerned that the fix was in—that it was set up so that Postquantum, a US based company, could succeed—that they contacted me and raised concerns about the process. They also contacted the media. I spoke in the Federation Chamber in November 2023 about the irregularities in this process and the concerns industry had that Postquantum would win that tender process. To be very clear, no announcement had been made at that stage. In November 2023 I raised that. We now know, through FOIs and Senate estimates, that the department assessed the 21 proposals from the Australian quantum industry in a matter of weeks, compared to the $7 million of external advice and months and months of processes for the US based Postquantum. Then, what do we know? Lo and behold, shock-horror, in April 2024 Minister Husic and the government announced that Postquantum won the process. Wow! I must be Nostradamus to have been able to predict that in November. How amazing that that could happen! That process is now before the audit committee. There have been letters written by our side to the Auditor-General. Being on the audit committee, I am going to follow that process with interest. If this is how those opposite treat the Australian quantum industry, where does it leave us with any other industry?

Just when you might think it couldn't get any worse—this deal with Postquantum to build a computer in Brisbane—it did. Just in the last month the City of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, announced that they have agreed to a $500 million package of incentives with Postquantum to build a quantum computer in Chicago. Suddenly we're giving $900 million to this company to build it in Brisbane and the City of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, are giving them $500 million to build it in America. You would have thought, if we were going to spend that money, the minister would have at least done the due diligence to get a non-compete clause or some level of exclusivity for the Australian people. The question is: how does this happen? Is it because of the connections of Brookline Advisory, or has the minister just decided that he'll pick the winners?

The SaturdayPaper recently had an article about Postquantum, including a quote from a department of industry insider. I'm going to repeat that quote, although I will change the last word because it is not parliamentary. This is a quote about the minister for industry: 'This is a minister who is a conviction politician who gets very excited and very enthusiastic about big ideas that could potentially change the nation, but the downside is that, when this same minister is presented with advice that goes against one of those big ideas, he really loses his mind.' This is a department insider saying that the minister for industry refuses to listen to advice from the department, and the government are telling us that this minister, along with his very good friend—as we know—the Treasurer, is going to sit down in a room and make these decisions. I'm very much looking forward to the Treasurer and the Minister for Industry and Science getting together over a cup of tea to make these decisions because it shows that they're not actually about delivering a future made in Australia for the Australian people.

I was just with Food and Agri Australia, a new group representing family owned food manufacturers in Australia. Every business needs productivity gains, which allow them to make more products at a cheaper price and bring their unit costs down. But there was not one word in the minister's speech about a future made in Australia about productivity. The minister has been missing on productivity for the last 2½ years. When he re-imagined the economy, he channelled his hero Paul Keating but didn't mention productivity. You need to drive productivity because it lifts opportunities for all industries. Food manufacturers, like those I met with today—those in the resources sector, those in agriculture, all across the country—are driving productivity. It makes a difference.

The other challenge when we talk about due diligence and proprietary is that, as I said, we already have $470 million of Australian taxpayer money tied up in PsiQuantum. I've gone through the farce of that process. We have already committed $2 billion to Hydrogen Headstart and $1 billion to Solar Sunshot, and we've seen the reports over the last few months that the wheels are already falling off. The government are refusing to put Hydrogen Headstart and Solar Sunshot through this process. They're saying we need this process moving forward, but not for the $3½ billion of taxpayer money we've already spent. That's the hypocrisy of those opposite. They'll talk about the importance of policy and due diligence but won't put it through what they've already spent. They know for a fact that the PsiQuantum deal won't stand up.

This isn't about delivering and competing on a global stage. The Prime Minister has talked about how the world has changed. Has he looked at the IRA in the US? He would understand that policy is technology agnostic. That actually backs nuclear energy as the only zero emissions baseload scalable technology that exists in the world. This policy selects one technology, renewables, and rules out others. In a world where we're going to see population growth in Australia—we've already seen the uptake of data centres that require significant energy—we're seeing new technologies like AI that require and consume a lot of energy. We're seeing the world and the government putting in policies, although those policies are already failing. We're seeing the world slowly move to EVs, which require more electricity. We have seen the government, those opposite, and the states try to electrify houses and take them off gas. So, at a time when we're pushing all these demands on the electricity system, we should be looking at all options, at nuclear, renewables and gas, to drive energy supply. As demand increases, if supply doesn't increase at the same time, prices will go up. That's economics 101.

As I said at the start, this Future Made in Australia policy ticks the four boxes of the Albanese Labor government playbook. It has an impressive sounding name. It has a lot of money over a long time. It's off-budget spending. There's a lack of detail in the bill.  And we know that 2½ years in, it ticks the fifth box. It's not actually going to deliver; it's going to make life harder for the Australian people, for Australian businesses, for those who want to have a go and for those who have already invested in business in this country.

See this speech in context