Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wide Bay's pioneers were instrumental in building Australia. Our gold gave the nation wealth, and our Gympie messmate hardwood built railways, wharves and homes. Sawmills and goldmines supported hotels, schools, police stations and telegraph offices across Gympie, Maryborough, Noosa and all the settlements in between. Our livestock put protein on family dinner tables across the country. Wide Bay is a region that Australia has relied upon since Federation, and, with our government's investment, it will continue to be so into the future.

Our need to protect supply chains in essential products like medical and building supplies, and food and beverages was never more evident than during COVID-19, when we left shops without what we went there for: hardwood timber, staple foods and some medicines. Before the pandemic, our government was building more stable supply chains in critical minerals and investing in our Defence Force capacity, including by increasing defence equipment manufacturing in Australia.

The new Rheinmetall NIOA Munitions plant in Maryborough shows that we can build that Australian industrial defence capability and we can do it fast. With the help of a $28.5 million grant from the Commonwealth government, in 12 months Rheinmetall NIOA has transformed a greenfield site into the most advanced artillery-case-manufacturing plant of its kind in the world. RNM has engaged more than 70 local regional Queensland companies to supply it with goods and services for the project. When fully operational, RNM will have a workforce of about a hundred people to produce more than 30,000 artillery shells each year for the ADF and allied nations. The RNM facility embraces our government's vision of collaboration with industry to create sovereign capability.

Manufacturing is the second-largest industry in Wide Bay and accounts for nearly a third of our exports in timber products, foods, chemicals, metals, machinery and equipment. Home renovators left hardware stores empty handed during COVID, unable to secure necessary supplies because we are overreliant on other nations.

A new $2.2 million production line, helped by a $1.1 million grant from the Commonwealth government, at DTM Timber in Maryborough means reducing our dependence on imported products by making laminated hardwood timber products in Australia. Construction beams, posts, stairs, stair treads and flooring will be made using shorter cuts of timber left over from DTM Timber's existing processing facility.

Australia's first commercial algae-processing facility, Provectus Algae, a biotechnology company in Noosaville, specialises in biomanufacturing high-value compounds. They're expanding into a larger scale manufacturing facility, to open by year's end. We provided Provectus Algae with $390,000 to assist in world-first technology to extract precious compounds from algae to produce novel biologics and pharmaceuticals for infections, inflammatory disorders and cardiovascular diseases.

More than a third of people in Wide Bay are technicians, tradies, labourers or machinery drivers, all employed by manufacturing. We have manufacturers such as Helitak, which make tanks attached to helicopters for firefighting, which this government awarded an accelerating commercialisation grant. We have longstanding processors such as Nolan Meats, which process more than 2,500 cattle per week and feed Australians and people living in Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Middle East, Africa, Taiwan and the USA.

Wide Bay has helped to build Australia since settlement, and it is positioned to continue to build, feed and grow Australia well into the future. I'm very proud of where Wide Bay is positioned in our future manufacturing strategy.

House adjourned at 19:59