Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

There are very good reasons for the coalition to oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill. I've listened to several of those opposite whose contributions to this debate show that they've never started a business themselves, never invested their own money in business, never employed people and certainly never dealt with the basics of running a viable business.

The Labor members have talked a lot about manufacturing, but, to start with, any business, manufacturing or other, needs to get the basics right to start a business and to survive. Put simply, when my husband and I bought our dairy business, we had to focus on a couple of core basics: keeping our production costs as low as possible and growing our production. We had to generate enough income to pay our bills, pay off our loans, grow the business and pay for our cost of living. If we didn't do those things and make a profit, we would have gone broke. And, no, it certainly was never easy.

The decisions of governments can make or break small and family businesses, as we're seeing with Labor's decision to shut down live sheep exports. What members opposite need to take responsibility for is that there is absolutely no question that the government's dreadful economic management has driven up the cost of manufacturing, particularly through the increasing cost of electricity, which is one of the highest in the top three costs in most manufacturing businesses. This has caused a tripling of manufacturing insolvencies since June 2022.

For practical purposes, any future made in Australia first needs existing businesses to survive. This is an issue because around 19,000 businesses have become insolvent since Labor came to office. It's the highest insolvency number on record since ASIC has been collecting this information, and what a dreadful record that is for the Labor government. Part of that 19,000 insolvency number is the thousand Western Australian businesses that have ceased trading. Half of these are in the building sector at a time when we're short of housing.

However, I have no doubt that even more businesses have gone broke or failed and simply had to shut their doors and walk away. In my own electorate, I've seen small and family businesses do exactly that because they've had no choice. Labor's bill, MIA, is accurately named because Labor has been and still is missing in action for small and medium family businesses and their workers. This bill is definitely missing in action for the food processing manufacturing sector and their workers, who are so critical in regional Australia and add value to the amazing products produced by our farmers. It's no wonder Labor never had any plans for these struggling family businesses and small businesses other than to progressively increase their costs of doing business, increase their personal costs of living, and generally make their lives harder and their businesses less productive.

How many times did the Prime Minister promise to lower the power bills of Australians by $275 a year? He also promised to lower the cost of living and lower the cost of mortgages. Small and medium family businesses have had to deal with the relentless increases in costs driven by Labor's homegrown inflation, which is driven by an additional $315 billion of Labor government spending. As a result, businesses have had to deal with—or try to deal with—overwhelming increases in electricity for practical purposes, for small and family business owners, who might be those ahead in this legislation, meaning virtually every input cost in their businesses has increased. All of these inputs include the increased cost of electricity to produce or supply them.

Historically, Australia's wealth and wellbeing have been built on cheap, reliable, 24/7 electricity. It's the most fundamental need in households and businesses. I'd add that, as a farmer, quality water is part of that as well. Small and family businesses, even in the manufacturing sector, have had to deal with their interest and mortgage rates increasing 12 times and higher loan repayments. And don't forget that those same small and family business people usually have to mortgage their homes to finance their small business in the first place. Insurance has gone through the roof, that's if these businesses can actually find an insurer in the first place. They are working harder and longer for less and then have to go home and deal with the extra red and green tape Labor is imposing which is strangling their business and costing them a fortune. For instance, the most recent example that the majority of our small and medium family businesses are not necessarily yet aware of is that many of them are looking down the barrel of having to report their scope 3 emissions to their banks, insurers, suppliers and customers, courtesy of the Labor government. So, besides added staff costs and staff shortages, from August 2026, small and medium family businesses will have 700 pages of new complex industrial relations laws to try to understand and apply to their businesses, bringing with them massive challenges in managing their casual workers, the casual workers who often choose to be casual because it suits them best and who are the critical workers in these businesses. So the Future Made in Australia plan works as long as you don't employ casuals or contractors, apparently.

Many of these small businesses could now have a union representative sitting in their business for the first time, thanks to the Labor government. Family owned trucking, transport and logistics businesses are firmly in Labor's sights, facing a revamped Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal set of regulations, whether they are livestock transporters or freight and cartage businesses. Their fuel costs have kept rising as well. They're paying more tax. It doesn't matter which small or family business sector you look at, they're all under the pump from this Labor government.

Labor's Future Made in Australia plan doesn't include any of the family farming, trucking, shearing or countless local regional community businesses currently seeing their livelihoods compromised and severely damaged by Labor's ban on the live sheep trade. The majority of our surviving small and family business owners are under great pressure. You only have to listen to them to know that. They've often been unable to find workers and have to work extraordinary hours themselves just to keep their businesses afloat. In our regional areas, even if these businesses can find workers, there are no accommodation or rental properties available for them. How can there be when Labor has indiscriminately brought in over a million migrants, who put enormous pressure on housing and the availability of rental properties?

No wonder tax office figures show that 46 per cent of small family businesses do not make a profit and three-quarters of self-employed full-time business owners are earning less than the average weekly full-time wage. The Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman data shows that small and family businesses account for only 33 per cent of GDP and 42 per cent of jobs in the private sector, down from a historic 40 per cent of GDP and 54 per cent of private sector jobs. This appears to be a deliberate strategy by Labor—reducing the number of small and medium family owned businesses and, at the same time, increasing the numbers of public servants and public sector workers, workers dependent on government or dependent on taxpayers paying their wages.

But, very clearly, the most important agenda for Labor is increasing union membership. No wonder productivity in Australia has declined by nearly 5.8 per cent since Labor came to government. For households and families, their real disposable incomes have fallen eight per cent. Effectively, even if you're being paid more, you are actually able to buy less with it.

This Future Made in Australia Bill can now spend $3.98 billion of taxpayer funds in the run-up to the next election—really targeted at forcing out 90 per cent of the power from Australia's electricity system, power that's always on, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. That is our base-load power. It's a process that will cost at least $1.2 trillion by 2030. Only a Labor government could believe that all Australian households, businesses and industries can be majority powered by intermittent energy alone. Minister Bowen has openly said Australia does not need 24/7 base-load power. I'm not sure what planet the minister is on. How on earth can Australia's economy run almost entirely on intermittent energy alone, using assets that have to be replaced repeatedly at an extraordinary and inflationary cost every 25 or 30 years at least and with massive additional battery storage costs per head for businesses and industries individually?

We've recently seen virtual wind droughts and gas shortages on the east coast, and coal has had to fill that gap—the baseload. But Labor has a better answer. Minister Bowen's latest idea is that, when the grid is short, those with electric vehicles will have to dash home and connect their car batteries to the grid. Somehow this will magically provide refineries, food manufacturers, households and the energy grid with the power they need. Given the government is determined that Australia will become a green hydrogen superpower, this will mean that at least 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines will be carpeting our parts of regional Australia. For every kilogram of green hydrogen, at least nine litres of water is required. Good luck to our farmers trying to grow the food on that basis! But there is no mention of food manufacturing in the Made in Australia Bill. I note that a comprehensive study by Princeton University estimates that the price tag for Labor's green hydrogen superpower policy will be between $7 trillion and $9 trillion by 2050.

But this bill also contains some potentially very serious outcomes for those of us who live in rural and regional Australia. This is by way of the massive numbers of wind turbines and thousands of hectares of solar panels all being imposed on, or to be imposed on, and built in regional and rural parts of Australia. This is directly affecting our local communities, where we live and work, and will continue to do so. However, embedded in this legislation is the opportunity for Labor to literally force the intermittent energy turbines and solar panels on our communities.

As we've seen and will see, this will destroy prime farming land. Labor's 82 per cent renewables by 2030 policy means that, in regional areas, in excess of—and these numbers are just mind blowing—22,000 solar panels will have to be installed every day and in excess of 40 wind turbines will have to be built every month to 2030, either offshore or onshore. This is in regional Australia, in our part of Australia. And, as I said, there will be up to 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, often constructed over prime agricultural land. Just consider the enormous amount of land needed, day in and day out, to just host the endless wind and solar factories in our regional communities and areas. It appears, from what I've read in the media, that the ground is being prepared for Labor to do exactly that—to ignore communities and install these intermittent energy resources.

Many communities have resisted this Labor imposition, like those in my electorate in the south-west of WA, who are looking down the barrel of nearly 8,000 square kilometres of offshore wind turbines in the pristine, iconic Geographe Bay. What I'm worried about is that this legislation gives the minister and the Labor government the power to totally steamroll, ignore and override our local communities. It is something that I am very, very concerned about. It will give them the power to impose these projects, no matter what the community says or does. That really does concern me. I read one of the provisions that says that Made in Australia support 'does not need to have regard to the community benefit principles'.

In concluding, I see that this is in large part Labor's attempt to sell us a pup and to con those of us in regional and rural Australia into thinking that everyone's going to get a prize here, that everyone's going to be better off and that everyone's going to be a winner. But it is specifically designed to force our regional communities—the places where we live, work and retire and the places where our kids grow up—to accept Labor's endless numbers of wind and solar panels and the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines in our beautiful oceans and on our quality farming land. The green hydrogen superpower plan will compromise our irrigation and water access and assets over time. Unfortunately I see this as a con job for regional and rural Australia and its small and medium family businesses.

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