Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has an incredibly bright future, but it's up to this parliament as to exactly how bright that future is. We can choose to grab the opportunities that are in front of us or we can choose, as those opposite seek to do, to turn down the dimmer switch. We want this parliament to make a big strategic decision to choose Australia's future, to choose a future made here in Australia. Indeed, the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is a choice: a choice to be a country that makes things here or a country that only imports things, a choice to be a country that exports new energy and the products of the net zero transformation or that watches exports dry up as our customers switch to clean energy and we choose not to, a choice to secure the jobs for not just the next generation but for many generations to come or to see those jobs go to our international competitors, a choice to attract private investment—again, this bill is about attracting private investment. We can choose to open that door to private investors or we can choose to shut the door and say, 'No, we've got it all under control, but we're instead choosing to spend $600 billion of government money on nuclear reactors owned by the government.' It's about choosing our future or choosing to stick with the lost opportunities of relentless negativity.

I had a little bit of time on my hands yesterday, so I went through the Hansard on this debate from yesterday. I saw exactly what a policy-free zone the opposition have become. We saw the member for New England describe this bill as 'Kafka-esque socialist insanity'. We saw him say, in proving his point, that, under his analysis, 'You can't be an electrician in a coalmine.' That might be news to the people in the coalmines of Collie, where indeed they do have electricians doing very important work.

We saw the member for Petrie open his speech very appropriately: the first words to come out of the member for Petrie's mouth were, 'The coalition will oppose'. I'm going to say for those opposite that we know you're going to oppose. You don't need to tell us. That doesn't come as a surprise. But at least he was telling the truth when he said, 'The coalition will oppose'. But then he strayed a little bit from the truth. The member for Petrie said, 'Australia of course has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and the coalition has always supported it.' That might be news to thousands of workers in Holden, who might have a slightly different recollection of whether they got support from the coalition.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition returned to truth when she said—again, the first thing she said on this bill—'I rise to oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill.' Again, no surprise there. Then we had the criticisms from the member for Hinkler. He said the reason he can't support this bill is, 'We see nothing for uranium and nothing for nuclear.' Well, if he wants to talk about seeing nothing for uranium and nothing for nuclear, maybe he'd like to look first in his own party room, because we have still seen nothing on their nuclear costings, nothing on the precise locations.

The Leader of the National Party in Western Australia a couple of months ago was telling us they'd done all the geological surveys, for every one of the sites for the nuclear power plants, but won't release those geological surveys. I would have thought that if you respected communities and you were sitting on geological surveys about where you're going to place a nuclear reactor in their town then you would release those surveys. But no: we got criticism about having nothing for nuclear in our bill—and I agree; there is nothing for nuclear in this bill, and nor should there be. This is entirely about grabbing the opportunities of the future rather than the expensive ideas of the past.

The member for Groom went out and said that this bill is somehow communism. I'll tell you what this bill is about. It's about making more things here in Australia. That's just practical common sense, in my view. It's about making our nation a renewable energy superpower, grabbing those opportunities, and making our economy more resilient and more secure. Our economy has felt the pressures of international challenges, and we saw that during the COVID pandemic. Why wouldn't you want a more resilient and more secure economy?

We've proudly been doing that hard work of giving Australia that more resilient economy—our National Reconstruction Fund investing in manufacturing across our economy; the 500 fee-free TAFE places, building up the skills of our workforce; the investments we've made in our universities, in our science industry and in cyber capability; and the new jobs and expertise we are building up in our defence manufacturing program, which will be of particular benefit both to South Australia and to the wonderful state of Western Australia. And we have, for the first time in this country, a comprehensive plan for cleaner, cheaper energy for all Australians that can power advanced manufacturing and open up those opportunities of a net zero economy.

I think it's also really important to note that this bill is clearly about maximising private investment. You need only look at the explanatory memorandum to see that this bill is laser focused on getting more private investment from the global capital markets into Australian jobs. That should be welcomed by everyone in this place. It's about getting more investment into our economy so we can be a more productive economy, a more productive Australia and a more economically secure Australia.

One great example of that is the initiative for production tax credits. This initiative is something that pays on success. You get the tax credit only when you're producing these very essential critical minerals that we not only need but already have, right under our feet. As you walk through Western Australia, there are critical minerals in the ground. We can dig them up, refine them, turn them into advanced products and then sell those products. The private sector can make a hell of a lot of money out of that, and the Australian people can get fantastic jobs out of it, and we're going to incentivise that happening. There is no reduction in revenue where a company doesn't succeed. There is only support from the government where they are doing exactly what we and our international partners know Australia needs to be doing: supplying into global supply chains those critical minerals that are essential for so many industries and essential for the transformation to net zero.

I have a particular view, and I've expressed my support for this. But obviously there are a range of other views, particularly in the Liberal Party, about whether or not this will be something that they support. I want to reference something that Libby Mettam, the Leader of the Western Australian Liberal Party, said recently. I know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that you know Libby Mettam well. I think she's someone who's actually come to this debate looking at it in the national interest even though she's, obviously, seeking office in the Western Australian parliament. She said, 'We, the Liberal Party, will always stand up for Western Australia and we will support this measure.' I welcome that commonsense support from the Leader of the Liberal Party in Western Australia.

I understand, based on her own comments, that she is actively lobbying her federal colleagues, because she said: 'It's something that I will raise with my federal colleagues. We are committed to jobs and industry and new industries in Western Australia and that is my position.' Further, she talks to consistency, and we haven't seen that consistency from the Leader of the Opposition in this place. His consistency is just making sure he consistently says something different on the east coast to what he says when he comes to visit Western Australia. That, to him, is consistency. I note that Libby Mettam said, 'My commitment has been consistent in relation to this matter, and I’ll leave my comments there.'

This bill is also about making sure that we do look to build our future in a way that aligns our national security with our economic security, and we make no apologies for that. That's what the United States does, as does the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Canada. So many nations around the world are right now safeguarding themselves against whatever that next global shock is. It might be conflict, another pandemic, a cyber attack or another international energy crisis. Those countries choose to take action. Australia should choose to take action, and we can do so by passing this bill. We've got to work in economic reality. We've got to recognise that other advanced economies are investing in their industrial base. We've got to recognise that 97 per cent of Australia's trading partners are committed to net zero—97 per cent of our trading partners! We want to keep that trade going.

I not only want to keep that trade going; I want it to grow. I want to grab those opportunities. We also want to make sure that we don't just continue to extract and export our resources but also start doing what has been talked about by many sides of politics for many decades, where we don't just extract and we don't just export but we also start to add real value, because in adding value to our natural resources we create the highly skilled, high-paying jobs of the future. We can make things here. We can add value here. We can turn our resources that the world and global markets want into the products that the world wants, and make sure that, again, we secure the opportunities of not just the next generation but of generations to come.

Australia can do this and do it incredibly well because we have done this before and we have done it incredibly well. I know those opposite don't like it when we talk about the car industry—I don't know why—but look at what we did when the car manufacturing industry was created here in Australia during the Second World War under John Curtin, Australia's and Western Australia's wartime Prime Minister, and Ben Chifley. They looked to the future. They looked beyond the immediate. They looked to what Australia would need in order to be set up for decades of success. And we saw Curtin appoint Chifley as the minister for reconstruction in the middle of World War II. The Prime Minister who saved Australia during World War II knew that he didn't just need to ensure that we won peace but also to ensure that we had prosperity on the other side of that conflict. They looked forward, they planned, and we saw hundreds of thousands of Australians get good-quality jobs and be able to raise their families and build a future for themselves, all because of that work.

They also did the work that we seek to do—that is, to build a more diversified economy and a more decentralised economy, recognising that it was also our regions that were going to power this big transformation. It's our regions that are going to power a future made in Australia. What we see is that this will invest in our regions, securing Gladstone's future, a place that will be that global hub for clean energy and green industry. It will expand the wonderful medical manufacturing that we see in Victoria. In the upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia, we're making sure it is a producer of green iron, steel and cement, products that the world wants. Back in the Hunter Valley, it will mean new jobs, new technology and new manufacturing opportunities, making sure that workers across Western Australia—that one-third of the land mass—have critical minerals extracted, refined, exported and also turned into products.

I think we also know that you can choose in this place to be optimistic about Australia's future or to be negative about our present. You can't build the future with negativity. If you're scared of change, you can't make change. You can't create good, well-paying jobs if you're opposed to fair workplaces. I think that the Australian public have seen the negativity that comes from those opposite. There's no surprises that when each of them stand up to speak on this bill they start with the words 'I rise to oppose the bill'. No surprises there, because they spoke the same words when they rose to oppose the National Reconstruction Fund. They spoke the same words when they came in here to make all sorts of wild excuses as to why they opposed energy bill relief that is now showing up in households' energy bills. They want to end fee-free TAFE. They want to shut the door on 500,000 people who have had the opportunity to build up new skills, get new jobs and provide for their families. They have an unhealthy obsession with attacking the CSIRO. They liked to describe Australia as 'a manufacturing graveyard'. I think Australia is a great manufacturing nation, and under this bill we have a bright future as a manufacturing nation. I commend the bill to the House.

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