Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the many things that COVID-19 has revealed about our country is the crisis in manufacturing. We discovered, to our horror and shame, really, that we couldn't even make basic medical supplies. We're not talking advanced pharmaceuticals or nuclear submarines, we're talking face masks and hand sanitiser. But this crisis didn't just happen overnight. We're in the ninth year of this failing Liberal government—the wasted Morrison decade. Australia now is dead-last out of every developed nation in the world—every OECD nation—we're dead-last in manufacturing self-sufficiency. We only make about 68 per cent of the stuff that we need for our own economy.

In terms of total economic output—that is, the whole of the Australian economy—manufacturing is now only about six per cent. Yet in the 1970s, it was about 30 per cent. Now, I know we've grown other industries, sure. But manufacturing is not like any other industry. It's the most innovation-intensive sector. It's critical to our national security and prosperity. Overall, the jobs in manufacturing are high-quality, they're usually full-time, they're usually secure and permanent, and they pay above-average wages. They're good jobs. And they anchor hundreds of thousands of other jobs in the broader economy through the supply chains. It's hugely important in my electorate of Bruce, which includes the great Dandenong manufacturing precinct. Yet, under the Liberals, manufacturing's share of our total economy in south-east Melbourne has fallen every year for the last eight years, and we're now in our ninth year.

The government pretend to care. They talk about it when they think it's useful for them, but it's all fake. We saw last year the Prime Minister's record on job creation. Remember the centrepiece of his budget, the JobMaker scheme? It was going to make 450,000 jobs, he told us. He ran around the country announcing the 450,000 jobs. And what happened? Well, when the cameras were gone, they scrapped the scheme and it created barely one per cent of what they promised. Their job creation record is a fraud. They chased the car industry out of Australia—that's how much they cared about manufacturing—destroying a valuable industry and the supply chain that sat behind it.

But the challenge for Australia now, as we come out of the COVID recession and out of Morrison's lockdowns, is how to boost manufacturing. The Prime Minister doesn't have a plan. He talks about snapback: 'Let's make things how they were.' That's a low-wages, weak-manufacturing economy. We deserve and need better. A Labor government will deliver a future made in Australia and a plan to build back stronger. We will deliver a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to revive Australian manufacturing, partnering with the private sector—smart policy. The Australian Skills Guarantee will give apprentices, trainees and cadets a chance on government projects, to give them a start. The Defence Industry Development Strategy, the National Rail Manufacturing Plan and, now, our 10-point Buy Australian plan. The Commonwealth spends $200 billion on procurement. We can squeeze more value out of that for small and medium-sized businesses and we can create more jobs in Australia with a smart, Buy Australian policy. Contrast that with the government's laissez-faire, let-it-rip, she'll-be-right approach.