Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is important legislation that establishes a vision for Australia and a road map for our future. It delivers on another Albanese government election commitment—to rebuild the Australian manufacturing sector. Manufacturing impacts on just about every other sector of the Australian economy and on Australian productivity.

As an island nation, it is so important for Australia, to the extent possible, to be self-sufficient in everyday life. It's important for our future security, particularly right now with so much uncertainty and insecurity throughout the world. The COVID pandemic was a wake-up call for all of us. We cannot continue to be complacent and reliant on overseas imports for our everyday needs and, even more importantly, for products and services that ensure and guarantee our security. Australia doesn't need to be at the mercy of overseas suppliers for most of what we need, because Australia is one of the few countries that could be largely self-sufficient. I accept that there may be some products that we will never be able to produce here, but generally we could be largely self-sufficient. We are indeed a lucky country. We are blessed with an abundance of natural resources—farmland and wide-open spaces, and renewable energy resources such as wind and solar. We have innovative industries and world-leading research institutions. If you put all that together, it gives you opportunities that most other countries can only dream of. Indeed, other countries, with less of all of those things that matter, have done exceptionally well, and yet we in Australia seem to be wasting opportunities that others would never waste.

In the post World War II years Australia became a manufacturing powerhouse. There was almost nothing that this country wasn't building or manufacturing. In the late 1960s, when it was at its peak, manufacturing accounted for over 25 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product and nearly one-third of the Australian workforce. Today those figures have plummeted to somewhere between six and seven per cent—less than a quarter of what it used to be. It is true that, towards the end of the last century, cheap overseas labour saw much of Australian manufacturing relocate overseas. However, today automation and robotics in the manufacturing sector have largely diminished the 'cheap labour' argument. There are many other advanced economies which don't have cheap labour but which have successfully developed their manufacturing industries, or have retained them and kept them going, and are able to compete with the so-called cheap labour countries when it comes to manufacturing products. They are doing that right now, without all of the other things that Australia has, including the many natural resources that I referred to earlier.

With so many natural advantages, Australia can also re-establish its manufacturing sector, and many Australian industries are already doing that. I have visited many myself and I've seen what they are doing. I've also seen many emerging industries that are becoming innovative and making that their advantage over their overseas competitors. With the global energy transition underway, right now is an opportune time for Australia to reinvest and rebuild Australia's national capability and manufacturing base, and that is exactly what this legislation aims to do. The legislation is the beginning of that process—a process that will, of course, take some time. For those opposite who raise individual criticisms of the legislation: I have no doubt that, as this policy is being rolled out, there will be oversight and changes made along the way if those changes are deemed to be necessary.

The Future Made in Australia policy provides funding that not only will attract private investor funds that will, indeed, invest in nation-building projects—just as Australia saw in World War II—but will, in fact, set a direction that gives confidence to both the private sector and other governments, whether it's state or local governments, to do the same. That means investing in projects that not only produce goods and essential services but, importantly, provide critical research and development, as well as projects that go to the heart of creating skills and innovation.

In years gone by, it was the manufacturing sector that played a critical role in skilling up our workforce and in providing traineeships and apprenticeships. As the manufacturing sector declined, so did the opportunities to skill-up our workforce. Right now, one of the key contributing factors to the national housing crisis is the shortage of skills and locally-made building products, which have to be brought in from overseas. Both of these factors are not only driving up costs but causing construction delays—again, all because we allowed what we had to slowly slip away.

Today, energy costs have become critical to competitive manufacturing, and that's been echoed by others in the course of this debate. It is a fact: energy costs are one of the critical inputs into manufacturing. With Australia's abundance of wind and solar energy, government investment in renewable energy is not only necessary but in the national interest. We will have an advantage if we take that opportunity and deal with it now.

Japan and South Korea are two of the world's leading manufacturing countries. They have both built modern, strong economies on their manufacturing sector—that's effectively what sustains their economies. Both countries are investing in renewable or low-emissions energy, and the governments of both countries financially support their manufacturing sectors. Both of those countries also acknowledge Australia's renewable energy advantage and are looking to Australia for things like green hydrogen.

My argument is that, instead of us sending Japan and Korea green hydrogen—and we should if we can—we could also do what they want to do with the green hydrogen and use it to power our own industries here in Australia and provide the cheap energy that they are looking for in their own countries. It's like everything else that we do in this country and that we export. We export the raw products but never look at what those raw products are then used for or continue to manufacture those products. Indeed, Korea and Japan, which are truly world leaders in manufacturing, both have a vertical integration system in most of their industries. With most of their industries—whatever they make—they then look at vertical integration, in order to make the next product and the next product that flows from whatever it is that they are doing. Australia could be doing the same.

Rebuilding manufacturing is not just good for the big cities in this country; it is good for regional communities. Many regional communities have their own local industries that would benefit from having an industry sector that supports them, because if they needed a particular component there would be another manufacturer here in Australia that they could go to, rather than having to wait for something to come from overseas. It would be good for our balance of trade because we wouldn't have to buy in the products that we buy in today, many of which we were manufacturing in this country only 30 and 40 years ago. It would mean we wouldn't be having the trade deficits that we have. It would be good for employment opportunities. Manufacturing was one of those areas that provided a job for everyone, whether it was a university graduate or someone with very low-education skills. There was a job for everyone, and there is no reason why that would not be the case again. I want to see the 'made in Australia' label on more products both here in Australia and overseas. Quite frankly, if we can rebuild our manufacturing sector, then we will again be able to export the very products that we are making here, as we used to do.

In my own state of South Australia—and the member for Mayo touched on this—manufacturing became critical to the state's economy. Manufacturing was built up in South Australia in the post-World War II years. The premier at the time was Thomas Playford, a conservative premier. He saw the vision and the importance of manufacturing to the South Australian economy, and he invested government money in a whole range of areas which underpinned the manufacturing base that we had there, including the car industry with GMH. This became the biggest industry in South Australia in terms of GMH and all the automotive component suppliers that it underpinned as well. The coalition government, unlike a former conservative government, did the exact opposite and destroyed the car industry after almost 100 years in existence, leaving Australia the only advanced nation that today does not build cars.

That industry was also probably the single biggest contributor to research and development in this country. Again, we have lost all of that expertise. We have lost all of that innovation. Manufacturing is indeed the glue that pulls every other business sector together, and we have an opportunity in this country to rebuild our manufacturing base because of the natural resources and the skills of the people of this country, and we do have some incredibly skilful people who are innovative in every sense of the word. We can be proud of some of that innovation, which, unfortunately, all too often is then shipped offshore for processing and manufacture rather than being made here in Australia. It is time that we took credit for what we can do, used the resources we have, used the opportunities we have and started investing in ourselves. And that's exactly what this legislation will do.

This legislation will ultimately make a huge difference to the long-term prosperity of our country. It has always been Labor governments that have shown leadership and brought major reform to this country. This is reform that is now needed, and, as I said earlier on, it goes hand in glove with our need transition to a lower-emissions energy source. We have the advantages, we have the resources, and right now is the right time to do it. I say to members opposite: sure, you can pick holes in the legislation if you want, and I have no doubt that there will be issues here and there that you can pick on. But look at the big picture of where this legislation wants to take us. Rather than pick holes in it, ensure that, once the legislation and the processes are underway, we adhere to the direction that we want to go. If we need to be steered back on track for one reason or another, that's the time to come back to this parliament and say, 'This could have been done better,' or, 'That should have been done a different way,' rather than throwing out the whole direction that this legislation would take us in. Frankly, I think this will be the biggest reform this country will see for years to come if we're able to pull it together, and we can only do that with the support of everyone in this parliament. I commend the legislation to the House.

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