Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today we're contemplating the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. It's a great tagline. Well done. As usual, Labor policy is guided by what can fit on a corflute at a polling booth. I can see the corflutes at the next election now: 'Labor supports a future made in Australia', perhaps with some subtle green and gold colouring to give that patriotic feeling to voters as they walk into the polling booth. This has no doubt been tested by focus groups. The government and everyone love things that are made here. We all have a sense of national pride and we want our country to be self-reliant and able to make stuff. What will the next Hills hoist or the next Victa lawnmower be? Will this bill reveal the next one of those things? I say it won't.

What we all agree on is that we want Australia to be a successful and competitive manufacturing nation. What we disagree on with the other side is how to make that happen and why on earth Labor would want to be a one-trick pony when Australian manufacturing could be so much more. I rise today to add my voice to the chorus of opposition to this disastrous and desperate proposal. What the corflutes won't say is that the Future Made in Australia isn't what Labor is making it out to be. Make no mistake: this is an ideological pursuit for the Labor Party. The coalition will oppose this bill because the more we hear about this plan the more we know it doesn't have any merit. What this plan actually is is a plan for pork-barrelling and more green energy financing, not the making of a strong, diversified and sustainable economy. This is a plan for more government intervention and handouts with strings attached, not genuine business investment.

Australia has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and the coalition has always supported it, despite what those on the other side say. But that support requires strong economic management that gets Australia back on track. We've got to get the basics right: affordable and reliable energy, flexible workplaces, less regulation and a reliable tax system that incentivises and rewards investment. Labor's policies on energy, industrial relations and tax are all making Australia a less attractive place to do business. The benefits to enterprise from a government handout are more than outweighed by the antibusiness settings which have been introduced by the Albanese Labor government.

This bill is literally all spin and no substance. The facts are clear: insolvencies in Australia are at record highs, productivity is down and businesses are struggling to just keep their doors open. Labor's plan for a future made in Australia has more spin than a Shane Warne leg break. As the shadow Treasurer has said, this is a political slogan in search of a policy. Economist after economist has criticised this policy. We're hearing more stories about the dodgy processes, the lack of economic scrutiny and the double standards that will apply to this program. Government can't solve the cost-of-living crisis by throwing billions of hard-earned taxpayer money around, and it most certainly can't solve the inflation spiral by doing the same. The Prime Minister might want to pick winners, but Australian families will continue to lose from Labor's reckless spending.

This bill is actually a demonstration of Labor's wrong priorities. After watching the government spend the whole of 2023 promoting its divisive and flawed $500 million Voice proposal rather than focusing on cost-of-living relief, Australians were hopeful that 2024 might be the year when the Prime Minister focuses on taming inflation and getting prices down. Instead, the Prime Minister revealed a plan to spend even more money and make productivity worse, a plan that has failed to gain support from mainstream economists. Labor has given plenty of handouts to lobbyists and overseas corporations, many of whom have ways other than government handouts to raise finance, but Labor has no plan for struggling families and small businesses.

Australia is in a full-blown cost-of-living and cost-of-doing-business crisis. Member after member on the other side of the chamber is blindly sleepwalking towards a model of selectively supporting manufacturing that will only guarantee one outcome: the continued manufacturing of high inflation. Australia is at the back of the pack when it comes to fighting inflation compared to our peer nations. We are the only G10 nation where core inflation has gone up compared to December. We are in an entrenched GDP per capita recession, with anaemic growth, which means households are going backwards. Around 19,000 businesses have entered insolvency since Labor came to office. For seats like mine in cities like the Gold Coast, that hurts families.

That is the highest on record since ASIC began collecting that data. Since Labor came to office, prices have gone up by 10 per cent, personal income taxes have gone up by 20 per cent, real wages have collapsed by nine per cent, household savings have gone down by 10 per cent and the family that has a typical $750,000 mortgage is around $35,000 worth off each year. This bill does nothing to alleviate these pressures on struggling families and businesses. This big-spending $4 billion cash splash is only going to make inflation worse. Households are going to great lengths to keep their heads above water, working more hours and taking on extra jobs. They're digging deep into their savings and making a lot of sacrifices to try to balance their household budgets, all because the Prime Minister and Treasurer can't show restraint in their spending.

Just like households, governments need to manage their budgets and live within their means, but the Albanese Labor government has shown weak economic leadership once more. With this policy, the government is taking from household budgets to bolster the balance sheet of hand-picked projects and companies that support their political agenda. That is not responsible economic management.

We know a lot about what the bill doesn't do, but what does this legislation try to achieve? These bills expand the role of Export Finance Australia and ARENA and establish a national interest framework that retrospectively underpins the government's Future Made in Australia policy. Let me tell you: the National Interest Framework will be conveniently interpreted as a political interest framework very quickly. The accompanying omnibus bill expands Export Finance Australia's remit to fund domestic industries and nominates the Minister for Finance as an additional responsible minister. The omnibus bill also expands ARENA's functions from pure R&D and demonstration to allow it to support manufacturing, deployment and commercialisation. These changes to ARENA are really just a slush fund for one minister. This legislation fundamentally changes the purpose, duties and roles of ARENA, but they won't be putting that on a corflute. No, they'll skip the part about how the Future Made Australia is a secret vehicle to drive their renewables-only energy agenda. This is not just a tagline; it's a Trojan Horse to sneak past Australians that this government is absolutely obsessed with delivering expensive renewables.

ARENA has always been a research and development agency. This is clear in its remit, the explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech. Labor in opposition opposed even expanding that remit to cover sensible net zero related R&D expenditure, including into carbon capture and storage and into blue hydrogen. How times have changed. Now they're expanding that remit even further, into deployment and manufacturing, and why? It is because it suits their interests and that of their donors. If ARENA is being given the remit to cover deployment, why does the Clean Energy Finance Corporation even need to exist?

But Labor's changes are more insidious than they have led the public to believe. This is because the bill gives the Minister for Climate Change and Energy the ability to boost its funding at the stroke of a pen. No parliamentary oversight, no scrutiny or accountability—just ministerial discretion to splash taxpayer money wherever the minister chooses. It is a delegated piece of legislation with which the government can roll out up to $4 billion to support their ideologically aligned corporations and projects in an election year. This is a slush fund plain and simple.

Australian taxpayers are already on the hook for Labor's inflation, and it will get worse. Labor has spent $315 billion in new spending since the election. That's over $30,000 per Australian household. I can tell you that, in my electorate and all around Australia, Australians do not feel like they are reaping the benefits of an extra $30,000 worth of spending on them. This has fuelled inflation. It's eating into living standards. It's expenditure where Australians ultimately foot the bill. They're not seeing a direct benefit themselves. Australian families are paying the price for Labor's mismanagement, with 12 interest rate hikes, some of the most stubborn core inflation in the developed world and the higher taxes that come with it. Australian families shouldn't be paying for Labor's billion-dollar renewables re-election strategy.

Another problem with this legislation is that it puts the Treasurer and his department in the position to decide whether a sector of the Australian economy deserves investment. The Treasurer has never run a business and described his private-sector career as six long, long months, and he will now be setting the conditions for businesses to operate and seek funding under this plan. The analysis to green-light these investments will be guided by a Treasurer who has hardly worked in business and a department of bureaucrats who under this government have made a reputation for failing to understand business. This is not the way to build a healthy and productive economy.

The Business Council have warned that these procurement rules are at risk of enabling this behaviour, while it risks subsidising businesses Australia would never have a comparative advantage in. The Business Council of Australia rightfully points out that this is important because there are taxpayer dollars at stake, but the BCA have also been clear that this is not the best path ahead. The best path is to get back to basics and get the fundamentals right. BCA President Bran Black has said:

Our competitors … are more investment-friendly environments based on old-fashioned fundamentals like tax and regulation.

To reinvent our economy we must, as a point of national urgency, become a more competitive place to do business.

The Productivity Commission says that a $1 billion commitment to make more solar panels in Australia under Labor's Future Made in Australia program should be retrospectively subjected to a tougher national interest framework. Allowing sectors to bypass the National Interest Framework process would undermine its role in disciplining spending, yet Labor is already breaking their own rules when it suits them. We are not surprised.

Key elements of Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda include the controversial PsiQuantum contract, which, of course, bypassed the National Interest Framework and sector assessments. There are serious questions to answer about the decision to make this investment, with it increasingly clear that Minister Husic decided to invest in this business independent of any departmental appraisal, analysis or recommendation.

Treasury was not consulted prior to the decision to invest in solar manufacturing, and their subsequent analysis has said that it is not a sound investment. The Productivity Commission were not consulted on the details of the proposed investment prior to their announcement, and we are already seeing that the policy is not effective. But the coalition is not the only one raising these serious concerns with Labor's plan. There is commentator after commentator jumping on board to point out the flaws in Labor's approach.

Australians want and deserve something better than a government playing politics with their money in pursuit of re-election. The coalition is working to ensure Australia can play to its strengths. We are looking to build a nation which is a mining, manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse and a leader in technology and innovation. (Time expired)

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