Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very proud to be here today speaking about this great bill, the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. I congratulate the minister, the member for Chifley, Ed Husic, for coming up with something that will create our cutting-edge future jobs in this nation.

It's not surprising that the opposition are opposing anything to do with creating jobs for the future, manufacturing and real jobs with real wages for people of this nation. We need to secure jobs for the future generations of Australians. We need jobs that are rewarding and sustainable.

I attended community meetings in my electorate over the weekend that just went past. Many of the families that attended spoke to me about their kids' future, what sort of work will be available and the sorts of careers their children and grandchildren may seek in a changing world. It is a rapidly changing world when it comes to technology; we can see it. The jobs of the future haven't even been thought of today. We're creating them at the moment.

The government's Future Made in Australia plan is about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero and securing Australia's place in a changing global economic and strategic landscape. We all have a goal, and that goal is net zero. It will help Australia build a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy powered by renewable energy; create more secure, well-paid jobs; and encourage and facilitate the private sector investment required to make Australia an indispensable part of the global net-zero economy.

This plan recognises that our future growth prospects lie at the intersection of our industries, resources, skills and energies and our attractiveness as an investment destination. It combines our comparative advantages in renewable energy with traditional strengths in resources and manufacturing to build new opportunities, including in critical minerals, green metals processing, clean energy technologies and low carbon liquid fuels.

The bill and omnibus bill deliver on key elements of the government's Future Made in Australia plan announced by the government in the 2024-25 budget. They impose rigour on government decision-making and help give investors the clarity and certainty they need to invest and unlock growth in our economy. It's really important that they have clarity and certainty to invest now, unlike with the previous government, who had 26, 27—I've lost count—29 different climate change policies. Who was going to invest in that particular political climate? No-one. We are committed to making more things here in Australia to build a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy powered by clean energy and to create more secure well-paid jobs around the country.

My home state was a manufacturing hub. It was a powerhouse of manufacturing. We had Holden, Chrysler—which then became Mitsubishi—Clark shoes, Rossi boots; there was a whole range of manufacturing jobs which have all sadly closed their doors in South Australia. But when you think back to one of South Australia's greatest initiatives, you think of General Motors Holden setting up in South Australia in partnership with the Holden family. It was a great premier at the time—I have to say it was a Liberal premier, Premier Playford—who had the vision and the insight to invest and incentivise GMH and others to build this great manufacturing factory. So good were the profits and the returns on it that then other manufacturing companies came to South Australia, like Chrysler, who created another motorcar that they built.

We were one of the only countries in the world and one of the only states in Australia where you could do all the work from designing a motor vehicle through to the manufacturing and then take the motor vehicle to the showroom floor. We were one of only 13 countries that had that capability, and if the government of the day didn't come up with a plan to have that investment put in there with incentives, it would have never happened. That was a revolution for South Australia. It was a manufacturing revolution which also attracted, excluding the 8,000 to 11,000 people who directly worked at Holden in the fifties, another 50,000 to 70,000 jobs within the state in manufacturing. Because someone had the vision and the foresight to invest and our government invested in it, it attracted people all over and it was cutting-edge technology at the time.

We are on the cusp of a second revolution in manufacturing through renewables. If we miss out, we'll end up worse off than a Third World country, because countries all around the world are trying to have investment and produce these cutting-edge jobs that we certainly need, and we need to turn our minds to the future.

In my electorate, future advanced manufacturing jobs are very much on the minds of the companies operating out of Lot 14, which is a hub for innovating companies on the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site. Lot 14 is a world-class innovation district, bringing together a curated government, research and industry ecosystem focusing on advancing the defence, space, high-tech and creative industries, and it's a catalyst of innovation for the future and especially for the future skilled workforce. The district has become a beacon of South Australia's broader innovation ecosystem. Leveraging the power of collaboration—working together—Lot 14 strives to grow South Australia's productivity and to solve those complex global challenges, leading to greater economic, social and cultural prosperity.

The innovation district is already home to global corporates. We've been able to attract global corporates that have invested big money in South Australia—such brands as Salesforce, Amazon Web Services and Airbus, who are co-located alongside each other and alongside highly respected organisations including the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre, and Stone & Chalk.

I was delighted to hear recently that the company QuantX Labs, based in Lot 14 in my electorate, has been awarded two contracts, worth $2.7 million, to supply optical atomic clocks that will deliver precision navigation and timing capabilities to the Australian Defence Force. That's a product that we're manufacturing entirely in South Australia and that will go to the Defence Force, instead of being brought in from overseas, and they will be exporting as well. They're already looking at exporting around the world. I've had the privilege of seeing firsthand their state-of-the-art facility at Lot 14, and many of the ministers have come down and visited it with me. This is a tremendous result for QuantX Labs and for Australia's sovereign capability to support the brave women and men who wear our nation's uniforms. I look forward to seeing young South Australians in my state—and in fact, with this bill, young people all around Australia—pursue rewarding careers, careers that have a future in them, in advanced manufacturing companies like QuantX Labs for decades and decades to come.

The budget includes a $23 billion Future Made in Australia package focused on unlocking private investment at scale in the net-zero transformation and strengthening our economic resilience. The Future Made in Australia legislative package will include community benefit principles which will ensure that these investments are made in ways that benefit the whole community, including local manufacturers, and require public investments to be made in a way that strengthens domestic industrial capabilities and local supply chains. The government's $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia budget package includes production tax incentives for hydrogen and critical minerals. We have the Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund, the Solar Sunshot and Battery Breakthrough initiatives, the National Interest Account and other initiatives to better attract and enable investments and make Australia an indispensable part of the global supply chain.

This is of particular interest in my home state of South Australia, which thanks to our transformational Premier, Peter Malinauskas, and our state Minister for Energy and Mining, Tom Koutsantonis, is working together with the federal government here in Canberra and making determined progress to make the most of the global energy transition by taking advantage of our unique combination of sun, wind and valuable minerals in the Upper Spencer Gulf and surrounding areas. SA's renewable energy share has surged from one per cent in 2007 to 74 per cent. If that's not progress, and if that's not people investing in renewables and creating jobs in renewable energy, then what is? We are Australia's renewable energy super powerhouse.

South Australia is also home to Australia's richest copper resource, with global demand for copper, iron ore et cetera set to surge for use in sustainable technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. In the Upper Spencer Gulf, we know we have superior magnetite iron ore resources, essential for the production of green steel, for which demand is set to surge as the world seeks to decarbonise. You look at our trading partners that buy this steel, and it's mainly Korea, Japan and China. In Korea and Japan, for example, they have car manufacturing. They have small geographic lands and countries where they can't have massive wind farms and solar farms. What they're looking at is to be able to have, for example, green steel manufactured in their manufacturing industries so they can reduce their carbon output. They are watching very carefully, and, if we miss out, they will go elsewhere.

This is what the opposition has to realise. There are millions and billions to be lost if this bill is not supported. We need to make sure that we are at the cusp of this and that we are right there at the beginning with these changes in technology. We know that our competitors around the world, including the US and Europe, are putting billions of dollars into this area to incentivise companies et cetera to be able to create these cutting-edge jobs and this cutting-edge technology.

The key to unlocking our full potential is our critical minerals, which is why the South Australian state government and the private sector are progressing plans for a new desalination plant and pipeline network called Northern Water. SA is seeking to harness renewable energy resources into hydrogen by building the world's largest hydrogen power station at Whyalla. Hydrogen is also an essential part of the production of green steel, so we'll be able to continue to export that steel that goes into those motor vehicle manufacturing outlets in China, Korea, Japan and other places that we export to.

Collectively, these measures have the potential to generate billions of dollars of economic activity and create thousands of jobs in the future. This will create new opportunities for my home state's heavy industry sector to decarbonise processes and to become more competitive against imported goods. That's why this bill is so critical to South Australia. It will return manufacturing to Australia's regions through a transition to globally competitive capabilities, led by the global push to produce green iron and steel. That will be one of the biggest parts of all of this—being able to lower those emissions when we're producing steel for our partners that buy our steel so they can then have their carbon credits reduced as well.

Thousands of new local jobs will be created, and this means new local jobs in construction and operations. This is a spin-off. I spoke earlier about the fifties, with General Motors and the incentives that the government then gave. This is the spin-off that will create thousands of jobs, especially for our First Nations communities. These jobs are real jobs here in Australia manufacturing Australian goods—real Future Made in Australia jobs. At the federal level, our plan will help mobilise the private capital that we need to make the most of the big changes in the global economy and to implement key Future Made in Australia budget initiatives.

Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou, when I think of manufacturing in this country, especially our car manufacturing—I know that, in your own home state, there was Toyota and Ford—when it first started, it created real jobs. It was cutting-edge technology. Governments incentivised it with millions of dollars, to begin with, and then continued to support it. But, for every $37 per assembly-line worker that was subsidised, it created more than $80 to $90 in the economy. That is a real spinner in terms of creating an economy that produces real jobs and real wages but also assists the economy.

This is what the opposition has to think about with this particular bill. This is about the future of our children and our grandchildren, and, as I said, we are on the cusp of this cutting-edge technology. If we miss out, we'll end up way down there with the countries that have no manufacturing. We know that those on the other side did all that they could in 2013 to chase out General Motors-Holden from my state, causing the collapse of approximately 30,000 jobs.

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