Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind her that in the last three years 105,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost, we face the worst manufacturing employment figures since records were first kept in the 1960s and manufacturing activity has contracted for more than two years under this government. Given plummeting confidence in manufacturing in Australia, is now really the time to be introducing an economy-wide, job-destroying, confidence-crushing carbon tax?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly believe now is the time to be working with manufacturing to secure its future. I certainly believe that means that the government does need to continue to roll out its programs and plans like the new car plan and I certainly believe that that requires us to work with manufacturing as we transition to a clean energy economy. In the carbon pricing package that we have announced there are allocations of around a billion dollars to work with manufacturing because we want to see them make that transition to a clean energy future.

Now is not the time to be cutting back the programs that support manufacturing, as the Leader of the Opposition has committed to do. Now is certainly not the time to be doing that. Now is not the time to go about cutting carbon pollution in the most costly, least efficient way possible. The Leader of the Opposition's plans for a $1,300 per family slug and no industry assistance as industries transition would be dreadful for manufacturing. Of course, if he were ever elected as Prime Minister, before he got there he would be taking a direct slug of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars out of the support that we provide to manufacturing. That is the plan in writing and circulated in the community of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister. It is a dreadful thing to do to manufacturing, given the pressures on it at the present time.