Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Our land abounds in nature's gifts, of beauty rich and rare.' Dorothy Mackellar got it right: we are indeed endowed with great and unique riches. Over the decades, Australia has ridden on the sheep's back and accelerated our prosperity courtesy of gold and, more recently, the export of mineral resources, including the energy locked into thermal and metallurgical coal. It's been a case of 'dig and ship', but those days are coming to an end. At some point, sooner or later, the nations with which we trade will no long be prepared to allow us to export our carbon pollution.

Europe is already introducing a carbon border adjustment mechanism to apply in full from 2026. The mechanism, as the EU says, is designed to ensure that the carbon price of imports is equivalent to the carbon price of domestic production and that the EU's climate objectives are not undermined. At some point, carbon border tariffs will spread beyond the EU and will threaten the value and quantity of the coal and gas exports which have underpinned our prosperity since the mining boom accelerated in the early 2000s.

Fortunately, we do have a choice. We have a choice and an opportunity. As a continent, we are uniquely endowed with sun and wind. Make the right policy decisions and we can be a clean energy superpower. Indeed, it's probably the only way that we can endow our children with the prosperity we have been so fortunate to enjoy, with secure, well-paying jobs in clean, green technology and energy. Ignore the opportunity and we run the risk of condemning our children to being the first generation in recent Australian memory to have a lower standard of living than their parents. That's not the legacy I want to leave behind from my time here in parliament.

That is why we are here right now debating and discussing the Future Made in Australia Bill, declared by the government to maximise the economic benefits of a net zero workforce and economy. But, as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail.

Considering the existential climate crisis in which we find ourselves, and the decade of delay and denial of the previous government, market forces alone will not get our economy to net zero. Add to that the Biden Administration's Inflation Reduction Act and the billions of dollars of climate-related investment it's underpinning in the United States. Already, it's sucking investment out of Australia. Companies which had plans to innovate in Australia cannot resist the financial benefits and opportunities offered by the IRA. As well, China is throwing everything at carbon reduction technologies, with recent record investment in renewable energy. These international developments mean a new approach is needed, an overarching strategic partnership between government and industry here in Australia—one which coordinates efforts across government and forms a genuine partnership with industry, one that is underpinned by a strategy which invests in the renewable opportunities of greatest potential as long as they're driven by the evidence and the data, and with minimum risk to taxpayers.

We've been down the path of picking winners before, and it took decades of effort by governments led by Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard to get us out of the blind alley of complacent underperformance. The Future Made in Australia legislation represents a step forward in this direction, but I would argue it's lacking in both ambition and rigour. Let's pause for a moment and check what we're up against. China is spending $650 billion a year on clean technology—much more than either Europe or the United States. China is way ahead of everyone else in taking up renewables. It has more than 50 per cent of battery installations worldwide, 70 per cent of wind turbines and 75 per cent of offshore wind.

This legislation identifies two streams for investment. The net zero transformation stream appears sufficiently rigorous to meet its objective of triggering and facilitating net zero industrial activity. On the other hand, the defined scope—or lack of it—of the economic resilience and security stream risks misapplication. It's appropriate for Future Made in Australia to address gaps in Australia's economic security. However, narrowing its eligibility boundaries or clarifying the sectors it may target would enhance genuine public confidence. It's a welcome step forward that, for a change, the government intends to establish an evidence base before committing public finance. I have confidence that sector assessments will provide ministers with sound findings and policy recommendations, but my confidence ends there.

Ultimately, as proposed, the sector assessment model lacks the rigorous safeguards necessary to inspire genuine public confidence in financing decisions made by ministers. I understand the intent of the provisions restricting ministerial influence or interference over the outcomes of a sector assessment are promising, but in practice ministers exercise influence over their departments—both direct and indirect. Sector assessments would be more appropriately conducted by an independent body, one free from the potential political preferences of any government now or in the future. As it stands, the Future Made in Australia legislation risks politicisation. Sector assessments are initiated exclusively by the Treasurer, which allows government to target Future Made in Australia supports towards sectors it determines are of most value. What's to stop the net zero transformation stream being used for financing of carbon capture and storage, or small modular nuclear reactors—despite the evidence that the first has yet to prove to be of value, while the latter have yet to advance far beyond the drawing board? There should be an independent body to scrutinise industry policy and the deployment of taxpayers' money at such scale. There are examples of this already across government—indeed, in the Treasurer's own portfolio. The Productivity Commission conducts assessments at the discretion of its minister but also holds the ability to initiate assessments of its own. This creates an appropriate degree of policy-making independence, and I urge the government to mirror this arrangement in the Future Made in Australia legislation. I'll be moving amendments to this effect.

The analysis and recommendations made in sector assessments should be a pre-condition, not an option, for the government to commit funding to projects. It is proposed that sector assessments will be made publicly transparent after 30 sitting days, which is welcome, but the absence of a built-in link between findings and finance erodes the integrity of Future Made in Australia supports. The government has gone as far as to explicitly state in this legislation that all expenditure under the legislation will occur via separate existing law. So much for oversight; so much for accountability. Redacted transparency reports will do only so much.

The composition of sector assessments similarly lacks definite boundaries. Consultation is not a requirement; nor are there any set criteria. A rigorous assessment process would be one directed to provide explicit final recommendations, detailed reasoning as to why supports are required and strict parameters of exactly what a support intends to achieve. Unamended, the Future Made in Australia legislation risks descending into a vaguely scoped slush fund. Support must be targeted to ensure it reaches the facilities and the workers with the most potential.

A glaring omission in this legislation is any restriction on a minister's ability to direct finance to technologies or infrastructure associated with legacy non-renewable energy. For the public to have confidence in the government's vision of turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower, safeguards to this effect must be included in the very industry policy it claims will achieve it. A standalone clause expressly prohibiting the allocation of Future Made in Australia supports for fossil fuel projects and other technologies of dubious value is essential. I note the intention of fellow members of the crossbench, including the member for Clark, to move amendments to this effect.

It is promising that this legislation incorporates what are termed 'community development principles', because one thing is certain: we will not make the necessary progress to achieve net zero by 2050 without the support of affected communities. That means paying special attention to their wellbeing and their welfare. Communities which have depended on the extraction of resources cannot be allowed to wither. There are opportunities for well-paid, secure jobs as clean, green technology is rolled out across the country, and special attention needs to be paid to ensuring that these communities not only survive but also thrive.

The government insists that the community development principles will guide the implementation of Future Made in Australia supports, but here too the rigour is lacking. 'Principles' sounds good, but the government has, to put it charitably, provided next to no detail as to how these principles would be implemented or what precisely 'support' entails. Future Made in Australia support, it is stated, means, any support, 'including a grant, loan, indemnity guarantee, warranty, investment of money or equity investment'. Talk about vague. Funding recipients do not have to demonstrate adherence to the principles, either, nor a long-term commitment to them, nor any alignment with Australia's net zero climate targets. A rigorous implementation would see them apply over the life of the project, an approach I encourage the government to adopt in regulation.

Glaringly absent in the community development principles as they stand is a substantial recognition of the role that women and underrepresented communities will play in our net zero workforces. We know that women and girls tend to be drawn to careers that hold a strong sense of social purpose. As Future Made in Australia supports are implemented, women must be included in trades, academia, engineering and all the industries adjacent to our electrification transition. Upskilling, internships and job placements are all ways Australia can reach net zero quicker, and I will be tabling a second amendment to this end during consideration in detail.

There's an urgent need to invest in our net zero economy, but I remain concerned over the ability of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation to rapidly scale and meet their requirements under this legislation. Neither of these organisations were originally designed for the purpose of delivering grants or significant industrial investment. I note the government's decision to lift restrictions on use of consultants for these two organisations, which is at odds with its policy for the broader Public Service. Time will tell whether this measure is temporary and whether further scrutiny should have been given now to their ability to deliver this expenditure without developing a new reliance on private consultants. The Future Made in Australia legislation therefore is a mixed bag, with positive signals that are marred by some flawed governance arrangements.

Australia has a long history of experimenting with industry policy, of bottomless grant funding and of federal programs used as slush funds. If Australia is to genuinely reach its potential to become a renewable energy superpower, our strategy must be fit for purpose. This legislation is enveloped in good intentions, but, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with those. I urge the government to consider the range of crossbench amendments that seek to make this legislation fit for purpose, effective and a pathway to the future prosperity of our nation.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Future Made in Australia is a plan for a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy. There are three key components. Firstly, the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 will embed the government's National Interest Framework to identify where Australia has comparative advantage in the net zero economy or an economic security or resilience imperative. Secondly, it establishes robust sector assessment processes to help inform rigorous government decision-making. Thirdly, it develops community benefit principles.

The National Interest Framework includes two main overarching streams. The first stream is to intervene where there is genuine comparative advantage in net zero projects or where there is public investment likely to be needed for the sector to make significant contribution to emissions reduction at efficient cost. This refers to the fact that, in some of the instances where there is comparative advantage, there might also be a deficiency of private investment—for example, if there is early-stage risk or uncertainty. This is the kind of situation that we find in a lot of instances where there is new or emerging technology or where there might be possible externalities arising from research. The second stream relates to economic security and resilience issues. This covers sectors where there might be some level of domestic capability that might be necessary in order for our broader economy to be resilient, where there might be risks that might be existing or emerging and where the private sector might under its own steam be unlikely to deliver what our economy needs.

I want to dwell for a moment on the second stream, the resilience stream. Some of the issues that arise in this regard arose as a result of COVID-19 and some of the issues that were exposed then. There was a realisation for many that Australia was not in a position to produce many strategically important goods and services and that our supply chains were exposed to disruption. Pandemics, of course, are just one example of risks to our economy and possible causes of disruption. There are others. War would be another. There are a number of macro risks. I think the issue goes deeper. Since then, there has been a broader consideration of the fact that some markets are vitally important to our economy and, indeed, all economies and that we live in an increasingly interconnected world. Critical minerals have also been increasingly identified as a possible risk to the supply chains that are going to become increasingly important to Australia.

For me, these systemic issues of resilience raise the prospect of a range of possible policy responses. One possible response in relation to these systemic resilience issues is storage. Storage is a first and, in a sense, most obvious response. This might be appropriate where a good is reliant on very, very complicated supply chains that would be almost impossible for any economy to replicate in a long-term manner. Storage for me is something that we need to bear in mind as an option.

Another would be bilateral agreements. This is something which came out during the response to COVID, where in response to some of the products that we wanted—for example, cutting-edge vaccines—bilateral agreements that might be negotiated in advance of an event such as a pandemic were a secondary policy response. I think bilateral agreements are something that we should definitely have in our policy toolkit, albeit that one must bear in mind that, at a time of crisis, bilateral agreements may be tricky to enforce at a time when some of the other parties that we have these bilateral agreements with will themselves be scrambling for the goods that are the subject of the agreement.

A third policy tool that I think is worth bearing in mind is working with other countries to diversify production where that production is currently highly concentrated. For example, this might relate to—and I'll deal with this in more detail—the production of renewable energy products, or it might deal with certain high-tech products where rare earth elements or certain critical minerals are integral. Where there are production supply chains globally which are highly concentrated at particular points, it might make sense for a number of countries to join together to diversify at that pinch point. So that's a third strategy, and that is indeed something which I know Australia is currently working on with allies.

Then, finally, there is increasing self-reliance in manufacturing, and that's obviously the subject of this bill. I think that there are a number of different strategies that we could explore as a country, and economic and social resilience could be supported by all of those. Increasing self-reliance in manufacturing is one of those. There are some goods for which that would only be a partial solution—goods where the supply chain is so complicated that it is, in effect, global. But increasing self-reliance in manufacturing is definitely a critical element of this. Indeed, increasing reliance in manufacturing could couple with the third strategy that I alluded to, which is to develop more diversified international supply chains. We could become an important part of those more diversified supply chains if we were to have a more robust and diversified manufacturing base here in Australia.

I want to just make a few observations on why some of these resilience issues are arising. I believe that there are four key aspects to Australia's growing exposure to disruption in relation to strategically important goods. One is that globalisation has led to increasing specialisation. Specialisation is important in that it has led to higher productivity growth. It has led to small- and medium-sized economies, however, becoming increasingly—or, in some cases, totally—reliant on imports for many goods, including a number which could be considered strategically important. This specialisation trend has been sustained over the last century. On balance, I believe that it is a good thing and that it has underpinned global productivity growth, but it has created risks.

Second, supply chains for many goods have become increasingly global. Even the humble Nutella now has an incredibly complicated global supply chain, which the Economist has pointed out in a number of cases. More to the point, the iPhone and many other critically important high-tech goods—many critically important parts of the future renewables economy—are also now subject to global supply chains. That can be a problem where parts of that supply chain are subject to market manipulation. The OECD estimates that 70 per cent of global trade now involves what they term 'global value chains'. This can be contrasted with more simple trade economies going back centuries, where it was much more a case of countries or economies swapping goods that one produced and the other didn't. Now we talk about many, many goods—and not just high-tech goods, although high-tech goods are critically important because they are of such strategic importance.

A related and third point is that some intermediate inputs are now highly concentrated, including endowments and processing of some natural resources, such as rare earths, and the production of some key inputs—for example, in the production of medicines. This can leave upstream producers very exposed to market power. Finally, the production of some final goods has become highly concentrated. An example is the processing of rare earths used in the production of lithium batteries and many renewable energy mechanisms. This concentration has sometimes been a by-product of the productivity gains arising from specialisation. However, it has led to the supply of some goods being very vulnerable to the vicissitudes of bilateral relationships and, in some cases, has left markets subject to manipulation.

Many of these factors that I've talked about—and many of these are multidecade factors or, indeed, from over the last century or more—have arisen for very good reasons, most particularly the productivity gains that I talked about earlier. However, while beneficial in many respects, many of these trends have also led to risks arising, particularly for small and medium economies. In classifying goods and services as strategically important or not, I believe Nutella is a strategically important good for my diet and my welfare in the mornings, but clearly there are many other, even more, strategically important goods, such as the telecommunications devices that I have talked about, such as high-tech goods relating to the clean economy of the future. But identifying goods as strategically important is not a simple binary exercise. It's going to be a matter of determining this according to a set of criteria and rigorous empirical analysis of where those strategic goods might have pinch points in their global supply chains.

That's why the sector assessments that are a key part of this framework are so important. These sector assessments are going to be undertaken very rigorously, and it's very important, I think, that Treasury plays a key role in this so that it will bring not just high-quality empirical data but also the analytical framework. There are all sorts of goods that one might imagine could be critical to the resilience of our economy, like food and food packaging. We've talked a lot about the sophisticated products that are part of the clean energy transformation, as well as medical equipment—not just PPE equipment and sanitisers but also the constituent components of vaccines and medical treatments, glass vials, chemicals and medical equipment. That whole part of our economy, I believe, is also critically important to our resilience.

The list of strategically important goods that might underpin our economic and social resilience is potentially a long one. We will need to intervene in these areas, I believe, in a very thoughtful way, because, for some of these goods, it won't be possible for Australia or, indeed, any single country to provide itself with end-to-end full resilience and full guarantees. So it's going to be very important for us to think strategically about how we intervene.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of strategies that can be undertaken to manage resilience. One is storage, and that is something which I think we should think about as one of our policy tools. One is international access, which can be managed to some degree through agreements. One is diversifying global supply chains, and I think, as I've mentioned, this is highly related to this fourth policy stream, which is enhanced domestic manufacturing capacity. In some instances, it will be diversifying global supply chains through us playing a key role. That might be, for example, in the processing of rare earth elements, and it might be that the diversification of global supply chains takes the form of Australia engaging in offtake agreements with other advanced economies such as Japan or the US and that it's only through those offtake agreements that the investment in upstream processing can become derisked enough that long-term investors will invest in those.

When production becomes highly specialised, the prospects of building up alternative supply options, even in conjunction with other countries, can be challenged. I wanted to just look for a moment at rare earth elements because they are critical to some of the issues that we're looking to manage most immediately in relation to this broader strategy. If you look at rare earth elements—and the numbers vary a little depending on which year you look at it—there are four major producers of rare earth elements in the world as of 2022: China, with 70 per cent, the US, with 14 per cent, Australia, with six per cent, and Burma, with four per cent. Depending on exactly where you define the boundaries of rare earth elements and which year you look at, those percentages can change a bit. Suffice to say that not only in the production of rare earth elements but the processing of them, there is significant potential for there to be market concentration issues. We know that rare earth elements are critical for all sorts of things like automatic catalytic converters, fluid cracking catalysts in petroleum refining, and permanent magnets. They are also a key component of many renewable energy devices such as wind turbines and generators.

A key issue for me is, firstly, how we de-risk the extraction and production of rare earth elements and also how we think about the processing of rare earth elements, an area where Australia has huge opportunities. When we look at this bill and we look at the development of a national interest test—which I believe is critical and a really important part of this overarching framework, based on comparative advantage and rigorous evaluation of resilience—coupled with sector assessments, this is going to be a significant step forward in Australia's consideration of its future economic development opportunities.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Much as I like the member for Fraser, and I commend his admirable contribution to this debate—very thoughtful, as usual—I find it interesting that early in his remarks he spoke about the appetite for risk in the private sector and the concern that the private sector didn't want to take on as much risk as it sometimes needed to. I'd remind the member for Fraser and others that one of the reasons we have the economy we have today is because the private sector did exactly that.

As I've said before in this place, when Apple were developing its computers or when IBM was developing its computers or Microsoft was developing its software, they didn't need government subsidies or government interventions. They took the risk to develop a technology that they believed would be to the benefit of our society. There are many, many other stories just like that right across this country.

I met recently with a local business that builds the hydraulics for the swimming platforms on large pleasure boats. If you drove past their factory without walking in, unless you knew what they do you wouldn't know what they do. They export that product all around the world. It's not just used for boats here in Australia but it's exported to the world. Not only do they do that but they also make specialist high quality water filters and desalination equipment for those boats which are, again, exported around the world. Do they need government grants or government intervention in the market? Not on your Nelly. What they need is for government to get out of the way and let them do what they do. Because they are already world leading at what they do and compete in the global marketplace.

I will commend the member for Fraser in his contribution because he actually failed largely to address any of the issues or any of the key points in this bill. I suppose it will surprise very few in this place, given the contribution of my colleagues previously in this debate, that the opposition opposes these bills. The reason we oppose these bills is that they are purely and simply a slush fund for the government to splash money around for their chosen political mates. If the government actually took a different tack and decided to get out of the way of business and let them do what they do, our economy would be doing much, much better.

We have seen under this government's watch over the past two and a bit years that Australians have continued to dig into their savings to make ends meet and they've had to sacrifice a lot. But not only have individual Australian households had to do that; increasingly, Australian business has had to do that. And as I look at this Future Made in Australia Bill I have concerns that it is not going to solve the problem; it is only going to add to it.

Australia has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and it's something the coalition has always supported. The coalition had, until those opposite came into government and abolished it, the manufacturing modernisation grant. This achieved, for many businesses around this country, what this slush fund will not. I'll give you a couple of examples just for businesses in my electorate, Merino Country and ATP Science among them. Merino Country were able to adopt new technology in sewing machines and innovative production methods to increase productivity, profitability and competitiveness in the area of our economy of textiles and clothing, which we have seen hollowed out over the past 20 or 30 years. They expanded the business, created jobs and, importantly, created Australian produced clothing that has the potential to replace imported goods. That is the real future made in Australia that our manufacturers want to see.

I'll give another example. Holmwood Highgate were successful in a grant through that fund for a laser cutter. The laser cutter is the largest flatbed laser cutter in the Southern Hemisphere. The productivity and throughput that it has created for that business has allowed them to be competitive and to be much more productive in the production of their bulk liquid tanks. Not only that, but, because of the capacity of that machine, they've been able to allow other businesses in our local community that require a piece of equipment that is a bit larger than what they have in their factories to come in and use that laser cutter to build and improve their productivity in their businesses. So, that grant to one business has not only benefited that business; it has also had a flow-on effect to many other businesses in our community, where they work together to use the advantage of that new technology.

The modern manufacturing fund built on other coalition government investments in manufacturing growth and competitiveness through the advanced manufacturing fund, the advanced manufacturing growth centre, the entrepreneurs program and a $40 million investment in the innovative manufacturing cooperative research centre. But, again, the latter shut its doors after the Albanese Labor government came into power—but not before leaving behind a legacy of approximately $4.2 billion in additional revenue growth for our economy.

How can our nation's manufacturers and companies like Merino Country, Holmwood Highgate and many others trust what this government is proposing and trust that it is going to do the job it says it's going to do? Far too often we see in this place the difference, the gulf, between what the government says it's going to do and what it actually delivers. Their favourite phrase in this place is, 'We're putting more money back into people's pockets and they're keeping more of what they earn.' Well, for those opposite, that is very far from the case. Under this government, with the increase in interest rates, the increase in the cost of living and the increase in electricity prices, whatever little crumbs those opposite have given back to the Australian people have been well and truly eaten up by the growth in the cost of living and then some.

The average person in my electorate who has a mortgage is $30,000-odd worse off per year just through increased mortgage payments, let alone increased electricity and grocery prices. The bits that they've got back through the tax cuts and other measures are very far from even touching the sides. Hence, we have seen a huge fall in the amount of savings of ordinary Australians and businesses to fund those increased costs of living and doing business.

Electricity is one of the things that are in everything that we do, and the increases in electricity prices and gas prices for our manufacturers have been extraordinary. Not only that, but, through the government's failure to control inflation, the costs of their leases have gone up. The costs of their inputs right across the board have gone up. Wages have gone up. We want Australians to be well paid and have good jobs, but we're seeing now, with the new industrial relations laws that are coming for small businesses in the next few weeks, the introduction of the capability for unions to turn up, knock on your door and say, 'We want a delegate in your small business.' Why would a small business that looks after its employees and is manufacturing the goods that this country needs need a union delegate? It doesn't. But all this additional red tape and these additional costs and expense are impacting our small businesses, and this Future Made in Australia fund will do nothing to address that.

We've already seen a couple of the government's flagship projects for this come into question, such as the PsiQuantum quantum computing announcement. We question why that has been done in that way. They say they want to introduce a National Interest Framework, yet this quite obviously hasn't been through that process. More recently, we've seen the government's flagship solar scheme, Solar Sunshot, go up in flames as the cold, hard reality of the cost of doing business in this country is realised. What other things are there that the government is working on but hasn't done the work on to understand the cost to deliver what is proposed? The best thing we can do as a country is actually get out of businesses' lives and let them do what they do best, which is to provide high-quality goods and services that are both used here in Australia and exported to the world. They don't need the government in their lives to do that.

There is an alternative, and that is what we did as a coalition when we were in government and what we propose to do if we are fortunate enough to get back into government. The coalition is looking at doing three things: we want to steer our nation out of the current domestic crisis that we find ourselves in under this Labor government; we will not simply talk about the challenges of our time but meet them head-on, with the action to carve out a more secure future for our country; and, most importantly, we will make decisions that set our nation up for success for the generations to come. We want the country to play to its successes and strengths. We want to build a nation which is a mining, manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse and a leader in technology and innovation. Do we have the capacity to do that? Absolutely. We've demonstrated over the last century or more Australia's capacity to do those things, more often than not without government intervention and interference.

It is these things that we want to focus on to ensure that our country is a success. It requires strong economic management, not slogans and handouts. It's about getting back on track and getting back to basics. We need to reduce the inflationary pressure right across our economy. We need to remove the interventions and the regulatory roadblocks that are standing in people's way. We need to remove the complexity and hostility of Labor's industrial relations agenda. We need to provide lower, simpler and fairer taxes for all. We want to deliver a competition policy which gives consumers and small businesses a fair go and we want to ensure that Australians have more affordable and reliable energy. It's this economic plan, with tried and tested principles, which will restore competitiveness and rebuild economic confidence.

I want to see a country in which we make things of high quality that go right around the world. This requires strong economic management and not slogans and handouts. As we've seen, a couple of their key projects are already at risk. This bill is euphemistically titled 'Future Made in Australia'. I am worried that it won't be a future made in Australia; it will be a future missing in Australia. That is what this coalition is determined to stop.

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this important bill, the Future Made in Australia Bill. The community I represent in this parliament has a proud manufacturing history, from established names like MasterFoods, Sanitarium and Eastcoast to promising local ventures like the Marshmallow Co. Food manufacturers on the Central Coast produced some of Australia's favourite foods, like Weet-Bix and tomato sauce. It's a vital industry that I've been advocating for since I arrived in this place. It's why I championed a food manufacturing hub at the last election and was so pleased that, with the election of this government, we secured funding to bring this industry supported project to reality.

At the last census, more than 2,300 Central Coast workers were employed in food manufacturing. That was 2,300 local people working in food manufacturing. It is our largest but by no means only important local manufacturing activity. The Central Coast is home to skilled workers in timber production, chemical production, metal fabrication and machinery manufacturing. These industries are crucial to my community and our economy, as they are to the southern end of the Central Coast in the electorate of Dr Gordon Reid, the member for Robertson.

But a proud history isn't enough to guarantee a stronger future. As the Treasurer said when he introduced this legislation, if we get stuck in the past, this country will be poorer. That's what we saw during the wasted decade under the previous government. I am proud to be part of a Labor government with a $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia budget package which gives life to this policy and to this legislation and, more importantly, has the financial resources to underpin it. We believe in backing Australian workers and businesses to grow and prosper and drive our economy. Government has a key role to play here in giving investors the clarity and the certainty they need to unlock growth and create secure, well-paid jobs for Australian workers, including in the regions.

The Future Made in Australia Bill comes to this task in a well-thought-out way through a set of actions to support our diversified, resilient and robust economy. The National Interest Framework will help identify those areas of comparative advantage and economic importance. I note the presence in the chamber of my colleague Dan Repacholi, the member for Hunter. He's someone who has worked in industries like this and knows the real benefits to the regions like his and the Central Coast. COVID and conflict overseas exposed some of the weakest links in an economy that was left to become too vulnerable to supply shocks and other challenges. But this period was not followed by a return to normal, as households and businesses know. We are in the middle of an enormous transformation in the global economy and we have a unique set of advantages to make the most of it for individuals, families, our regions and our economy.

The National Interest Framework and the second component of the bill, the sector assessment process, will help Australia seize the great opportunities available in the net zero and other growth sectors. Through Export Finance Australia and the new Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund, investment will be able to flow to priority sectors and those with national economic importance.

Our government is seeking to mobilise the private investment we need to benefit from the big changes underway in the global economic system. We can embrace this change and at the same time, with careful planning and foresight, make sure our communities are made the main beneficiaries. People, families and local businesses in urban Australia and in the regions across the country as the main beneficiaries: that's what our government wants to see. We want to see the economy work for the people and not the other way around. The local startups that I've met on the Central Coast that are bringing their innovation and ideas to reality can benefit our community and all Australians. The opportunities and potential need to be unleashed and can be through this type of careful planning.

Under this legislation, a set of community benefit principles will mean public investment and the private investment which flows will support stronger communities on the Central Coast, in the Hunter, in Victoria and right around the country. For me this is where some of the great opportunities lie for the businesses and workers of Lisarow, of Berkeley Vale, of Wyong, of Killarney Vale and across the whole of the Central Coast.

Investments made under this legislation will need to be made in ways that deliver benefits across the local community and economy—for example, in local industrial capacity and supply chains. I've had the opportunity over a very long time now to work with Central Coast Industry Connect, a local not-for-profit headed up by Frank Zammit and Ian from Herbie's Spices. They work they do to really bring together and harness the expertise, the skills and the potential of our local industries deserves this kind of support, and that's what they'll get under this government.

The principles will mean that, where public money is invested, it is supporting safe, secure, well-paid jobs and skilling up local people to succeed in those growing sectors. The Minister for Education spoke earlier today about the University of Newcastle, its university-ready programs and how one in five commencing students across their campuses start through job-ready programs. I've seen those students at the University of Newcastle Ourimbah campus in places like food manufacturing. This is a pathway for local people to the skills and training they need for steady jobs and prosperous futures. In communities like mine, where persistent unemployment and economic disadvantage still shape the lives of too many people, these are the opportunities we need to grasp for a better, more positive future, especially for the regions.

The other key focus of this legislation, of course, is to help Australia succeed in the transition to cheaper, cleaner energy, which is happening around the world. It would be unforgivable for any government to turn away from the natural advantages Australia brings to this moment such as the powerhouse regions like the Hunter. For our economy here in Australia and around the world, private capital needs an environment of certainty and a rational policy framework to give the confidence to invest in these big opportunities now and into the future. Under our government, that framework is being put in place through this and other legislation.

Targeted government investment has always been part of the picture as industries mature in Australia and around the world. As a parliament, debate around the best way to benefit for this change should be our focus. As the National Interest Framework takes shape and we see the assessments from Treasury, let's look at the evidence and debate the best ways to realise the community benefits, which every Labor member here is determined to see and to realise in their communities across the country. I'd suggest to the opposition that this is a better use of their time than advocating for hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to go on a nuclear project that will never happen. It's not a serious policy. It's got no economic merit. They are desperate for another climate war. That's what they're after.

I say again: if we get stuck in the past, this country, our country, will be the poorer for it. I want to see opportunities, incomes and living standards growing on the Central Coast and around the country not just in the short term but over the decades to come. This bill is good for Australians. It's good for the regions. It's good for our economy. I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are very good reasons for the coalition to oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill. I've listened to several of those opposite whose contributions to this debate show that they've never started a business themselves, never invested their own money in business, never employed people and certainly never dealt with the basics of running a viable business.

The Labor members have talked a lot about manufacturing, but, to start with, any business, manufacturing or other, needs to get the basics right to start a business and to survive. Put simply, when my husband and I bought our dairy business, we had to focus on a couple of core basics: keeping our production costs as low as possible and growing our production. We had to generate enough income to pay our bills, pay off our loans, grow the business and pay for our cost of living. If we didn't do those things and make a profit, we would have gone broke. And, no, it certainly was never easy.

The decisions of governments can make or break small and family businesses, as we're seeing with Labor's decision to shut down live sheep exports. What members opposite need to take responsibility for is that there is absolutely no question that the government's dreadful economic management has driven up the cost of manufacturing, particularly through the increasing cost of electricity, which is one of the highest in the top three costs in most manufacturing businesses. This has caused a tripling of manufacturing insolvencies since June 2022.

For practical purposes, any future made in Australia first needs existing businesses to survive. This is an issue because around 19,000 businesses have become insolvent since Labor came to office. It's the highest insolvency number on record since ASIC has been collecting this information, and what a dreadful record that is for the Labor government. Part of that 19,000 insolvency number is the thousand Western Australian businesses that have ceased trading. Half of these are in the building sector at a time when we're short of housing.

However, I have no doubt that even more businesses have gone broke or failed and simply had to shut their doors and walk away. In my own electorate, I've seen small and family businesses do exactly that because they've had no choice. Labor's bill, MIA, is accurately named because Labor has been and still is missing in action for small and medium family businesses and their workers. This bill is definitely missing in action for the food processing manufacturing sector and their workers, who are so critical in regional Australia and add value to the amazing products produced by our farmers. It's no wonder Labor never had any plans for these struggling family businesses and small businesses other than to progressively increase their costs of doing business, increase their personal costs of living, and generally make their lives harder and their businesses less productive.

How many times did the Prime Minister promise to lower the power bills of Australians by $275 a year? He also promised to lower the cost of living and lower the cost of mortgages. Small and medium family businesses have had to deal with the relentless increases in costs driven by Labor's homegrown inflation, which is driven by an additional $315 billion of Labor government spending. As a result, businesses have had to deal with—or try to deal with—overwhelming increases in electricity for practical purposes, for small and family business owners, who might be those ahead in this legislation, meaning virtually every input cost in their businesses has increased. All of these inputs include the increased cost of electricity to produce or supply them.

Historically, Australia's wealth and wellbeing have been built on cheap, reliable, 24/7 electricity. It's the most fundamental need in households and businesses. I'd add that, as a farmer, quality water is part of that as well. Small and family businesses, even in the manufacturing sector, have had to deal with their interest and mortgage rates increasing 12 times and higher loan repayments. And don't forget that those same small and family business people usually have to mortgage their homes to finance their small business in the first place. Insurance has gone through the roof, that's if these businesses can actually find an insurer in the first place. They are working harder and longer for less and then have to go home and deal with the extra red and green tape Labor is imposing which is strangling their business and costing them a fortune. For instance, the most recent example that the majority of our small and medium family businesses are not necessarily yet aware of is that many of them are looking down the barrel of having to report their scope 3 emissions to their banks, insurers, suppliers and customers, courtesy of the Labor government. So, besides added staff costs and staff shortages, from August 2026, small and medium family businesses will have 700 pages of new complex industrial relations laws to try to understand and apply to their businesses, bringing with them massive challenges in managing their casual workers, the casual workers who often choose to be casual because it suits them best and who are the critical workers in these businesses. So the Future Made in Australia plan works as long as you don't employ casuals or contractors, apparently.

Many of these small businesses could now have a union representative sitting in their business for the first time, thanks to the Labor government. Family owned trucking, transport and logistics businesses are firmly in Labor's sights, facing a revamped Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal set of regulations, whether they are livestock transporters or freight and cartage businesses. Their fuel costs have kept rising as well. They're paying more tax. It doesn't matter which small or family business sector you look at, they're all under the pump from this Labor government.

Labor's Future Made in Australia plan doesn't include any of the family farming, trucking, shearing or countless local regional community businesses currently seeing their livelihoods compromised and severely damaged by Labor's ban on the live sheep trade. The majority of our surviving small and family business owners are under great pressure. You only have to listen to them to know that. They've often been unable to find workers and have to work extraordinary hours themselves just to keep their businesses afloat. In our regional areas, even if these businesses can find workers, there are no accommodation or rental properties available for them. How can there be when Labor has indiscriminately brought in over a million migrants, who put enormous pressure on housing and the availability of rental properties?

No wonder tax office figures show that 46 per cent of small family businesses do not make a profit and three-quarters of self-employed full-time business owners are earning less than the average weekly full-time wage. The Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman data shows that small and family businesses account for only 33 per cent of GDP and 42 per cent of jobs in the private sector, down from a historic 40 per cent of GDP and 54 per cent of private sector jobs. This appears to be a deliberate strategy by Labor—reducing the number of small and medium family owned businesses and, at the same time, increasing the numbers of public servants and public sector workers, workers dependent on government or dependent on taxpayers paying their wages.

But, very clearly, the most important agenda for Labor is increasing union membership. No wonder productivity in Australia has declined by nearly 5.8 per cent since Labor came to government. For households and families, their real disposable incomes have fallen eight per cent. Effectively, even if you're being paid more, you are actually able to buy less with it.

This Future Made in Australia Bill can now spend $3.98 billion of taxpayer funds in the run-up to the next election—really targeted at forcing out 90 per cent of the power from Australia's electricity system, power that's always on, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. That is our base-load power. It's a process that will cost at least $1.2 trillion by 2030. Only a Labor government could believe that all Australian households, businesses and industries can be majority powered by intermittent energy alone. Minister Bowen has openly said Australia does not need 24/7 base-load power. I'm not sure what planet the minister is on. How on earth can Australia's economy run almost entirely on intermittent energy alone, using assets that have to be replaced repeatedly at an extraordinary and inflationary cost every 25 or 30 years at least and with massive additional battery storage costs per head for businesses and industries individually?

We've recently seen virtual wind droughts and gas shortages on the east coast, and coal has had to fill that gap—the baseload. But Labor has a better answer. Minister Bowen's latest idea is that, when the grid is short, those with electric vehicles will have to dash home and connect their car batteries to the grid. Somehow this will magically provide refineries, food manufacturers, households and the energy grid with the power they need. Given the government is determined that Australia will become a green hydrogen superpower, this will mean that at least 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines will be carpeting our parts of regional Australia. For every kilogram of green hydrogen, at least nine litres of water is required. Good luck to our farmers trying to grow the food on that basis! But there is no mention of food manufacturing in the Made in Australia Bill. I note that a comprehensive study by Princeton University estimates that the price tag for Labor's green hydrogen superpower policy will be between $7 trillion and $9 trillion by 2050.

But this bill also contains some potentially very serious outcomes for those of us who live in rural and regional Australia. This is by way of the massive numbers of wind turbines and thousands of hectares of solar panels all being imposed on, or to be imposed on, and built in regional and rural parts of Australia. This is directly affecting our local communities, where we live and work, and will continue to do so. However, embedded in this legislation is the opportunity for Labor to literally force the intermittent energy turbines and solar panels on our communities.

As we've seen and will see, this will destroy prime farming land. Labor's 82 per cent renewables by 2030 policy means that, in regional areas, in excess of—and these numbers are just mind blowing—22,000 solar panels will have to be installed every day and in excess of 40 wind turbines will have to be built every month to 2030, either offshore or onshore. This is in regional Australia, in our part of Australia. And, as I said, there will be up to 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, often constructed over prime agricultural land. Just consider the enormous amount of land needed, day in and day out, to just host the endless wind and solar factories in our regional communities and areas. It appears, from what I've read in the media, that the ground is being prepared for Labor to do exactly that—to ignore communities and install these intermittent energy resources.

Many communities have resisted this Labor imposition, like those in my electorate in the south-west of WA, who are looking down the barrel of nearly 8,000 square kilometres of offshore wind turbines in the pristine, iconic Geographe Bay. What I'm worried about is that this legislation gives the minister and the Labor government the power to totally steamroll, ignore and override our local communities. It is something that I am very, very concerned about. It will give them the power to impose these projects, no matter what the community says or does. That really does concern me. I read one of the provisions that says that Made in Australia support 'does not need to have regard to the community benefit principles'.

In concluding, I see that this is in large part Labor's attempt to sell us a pup and to con those of us in regional and rural Australia into thinking that everyone's going to get a prize here, that everyone's going to be better off and that everyone's going to be a winner. But it is specifically designed to force our regional communities—the places where we live, work and retire and the places where our kids grow up—to accept Labor's endless numbers of wind and solar panels and the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines in our beautiful oceans and on our quality farming land. The green hydrogen superpower plan will compromise our irrigation and water access and assets over time. Unfortunately I see this as a con job for regional and rural Australia and its small and medium family businesses.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was growing up in the 1960s, my mum and dad were typical of Australians who were really proud of what we made here. They were proud of their Holden car. They were proud of their Hills Hoist—Australian made. They were proud of Victa mowers. We used those and we knew they were made in Australia. At that time, manufacturing peaked at around 25 per cent of Australia's GDP, and up to a third of Australians were employed in manufacturing.

What happened in the sixties didn't happen by accident. John Curtin and Ben Chifley, whom I follow in the line of members for Macquarie very proudly, had a vision for what would happen when World War II ended. They wanted national reconstruction. They wanted things like the creation of a car manufacturing industry, and they saw the economic multiplier effect of having these industries. But 60 years on, while we are still very proud of our inventors, they don't often manufacture here. We are really proud of our scientists, but often they have to send their intellectual property offshore. And we are still proud of iconic Aussie brands, but too few of them exist and even fewer are made or even assembled here. But we can once again be proud of our ability not just to dig things up out of the ground, not just to grow things but to add value to them—to make things here or to make them better here. We can be the ones to turn resources that the world needs into the products that are in demand.

I'm not talking about putting on rose-coloured glasses and heading back to the sixties—heaven forbid! I'm thinking about where we could be in the 2030s, 2040s or 2050s by grabbing the opportunity that is right here now in front of us. We do that by harnessing private investment, with really prudent public investment a the catalyst for it. Labor wants Australia to be a country where we make things here, because making more things here will grow our economy and create good jobs—good, long-term, sustainable industries with good jobs. I think COVID showed us the need for us to stand on our own two feet and for that to be spread right around this nation. Incredible things can happen by making the most of what we have, making more things here, and making Australia wealthier, more secure and more independent. That's what Future Made in Australia is all about: an economic plan for a better future. It builds on the work that we've already done: with our National Reconstruction Fund, investing in manufacturing across the country; with our half a million fee-free TAFE places, building skills in our workforce; with our investments in things like universities, science and cybercapability, to name a few; and with our comprehensive road map for cleaner, cheaper energy.

In Australia we have a unique combination of circumstances. I've heard the Treasurer describe it as the geology, geography, meteorology and geopolitical advantage. All of these things can position us ahead of just about every other country in the world in thinking to the future if we seize those opportunities in this clean energy transition. What that really means is that unique combination of resources, of people and skills, of space and sunlight and wind can grow our economy, meaning good jobs, cheaper power and sustainable industries. I stress that we do this not as our sole purpose—because we are very focused on the immediate, on the things people are feeling day-to-day, like the cost-of-living pressures they are feeling. We do this at the same time. This is not a 'one or the other' situation. We are capable of asking: what is really pressing, for homes, residents and small businesses? What are the things that are pressuring them now? It's about not ignoring those and pretending they don't happen but tackling them to the very best of our ability. At the same time, we need to think about the future challenges so that we are actually putting Australia in a much better position for the coming decades. I think about doing this not just for my generation but for my kids' generation and for their kids' generation. That is what Labor is always thinking about: not just today—although today matters a lot—but also the future.

With this legislation, there are three parts to it, and I think it's worth understanding those three parts. One is the International Interest Framework. This will help us identify the sectors where Australia has a really clear and sustained advantage in a net zero economy or where we need to increase economic security or resilience. That is something I really want to stress—that this is actually about better aligning our national security with our economic security. The pandemic threw that into the spotlight. It threw into the spotlight the fragmentation of supply chains and our susceptibility as a smaller nation at the end of a supply chain, in often not being able to get the things we need when we need them. We want to turn that around, like so many other countries—the UK, Korea, Japan, Canada and the US. We are taking steps to safeguard ourselves, just as they are taking steps to safeguard themselves, against the next global shock. This is about derisking our economy and our society, whether we're thinking about a conflict, a pandemic, a cyberattack or another global energy crisis. That is the purpose of the National Interest Framework, the first pillar, if you will.

The second is a robust process to assess sectors to make sure we understand what the barriers to private investment might be and look at how we can actually break down those barriers. This is not about government replacing private investment. This is not about public money replacing private investment. It's about it being a catalyst for private investment.

The third pillar is a set of community benefit principles that make sure that the expenditure of public funds and the private investment that it generates lead not just to stronger returns but also to stronger communities. The ultimate aim is to have a more diversified and more resilient economy powered by renewable energy. We are already operating on the principles articulated in this legislation. In our last budget, we focused on a future made in Australia with investment, in refining and processing critical minerals, producing renewable hydrogen, exploring the production of green metals and low-carbon liquid fuels and not only supporting the manufacturing of clean energy technologies such as solar but also making sure we value-add in the battery supply chain. These are all things that meet that criteria.

Our $22 billion budget investment shows our commitment to this agenda, but it will need to be heavily supplemented by private investment. We look forward to working with the private sector. I had experience in working with the private sector—I had 25 years in business, much of it working with investment banks and large corporates—and 15 years ago they were saying: 'Just give us certainty. Give us the certainty we need to be able to make these investments.' They are wanting to invest, but the climate wars that those opposite have led means there has been absolute uncertainty for investors. As I said, I really look forward to being able to harness the private capital that is waiting for a government like ours and to put these things into legislation.

I mentioned earlier that we are doing this in tandem with tackling the cost of living. I just want to go back to that because I know what the allegations made by those opposite were. We are looking at a whole raft of cost-of-living things, but they're not just little tweaks. Let's look at the role wages play in helping people deal with the increases in the cost of living that have happened. I stood on the other side of this chamber back in 2019 and talked about the pressures that families and small businesses were under with the rising cost of living. Those opposite pooh-poohed the idea and said it wasn't a thing and wasn't going to happen. Well, the data shows it was happening. It was happening under their watch, and they ignored it. We are not ignoring it. We are actively doing what we can to boost wages at the same time as we are delivering tax cuts so that we're making sure people are earning more and keeping more of what they earn.

We're also making sure people benefit from relief on their energy bills. It's a small bit of relief that goes across every household. There's not just one group that benefits; it's going through every household and every small business. We're making sure people are getting the benefits of cheaper child care, cheaper medicines and the fee-free TAFE that I've mentioned. Does everybody benefit from every one of those things? No. But we're looking at where we as a government can target the support. It might not be me who gets the biggest benefit. It might be my kids. It might be their friends. It might be our neighbours down the road.

So these are the ways that we as a government are looking at delivering relief but also economic security for people here and now, but at the same time we recognise that the future matters too. Our approach follows not just the vision of Chifley and Curtin, which I talked about earlier, but also what I saw when I was a journalist reporting on the Hawke and Keating government: deliberate decisions to deal with the now but also to think about the future and not be passive bystanders as great changes in global economies occurred—not to be a cork bobbing on the waves and waiting to see where they would take us but to be taking charge of where Australia heads, to recognise the opportunity and to act on it.

It is very disappointing that those opposite either fail to even see that there's an opportunity or, if they see it, deliberately pretend that there isn't one. They actively choose to not take part in helping Australia determine its own future. What's the evidence that I use to support that? Let's not just use rhetoric; let's look at the proof points. For a start, they voted against the National Reconstruction Fund, a fund to boost our local manufacturing. They voted against anyone receiving energy relief. They don't want families to feel relief; they want families to continue to feel even greater pain. They say that fee-free TAFE was a waste of money. When I talk to childcare workers about fee-free TAFE, as I did last week, I know the benefits that those individuals are getting. Not only are they getting a benefit but our childcare sector is getting a benefit, and I have to tell you that means an economic benefit for every Australian, not just the families who will directly benefit and who value those early educators and the work that they will do. Those opposite also attack the CSIRO. How you can attack people who are actually looking to the future and looking to harness new ideas, new thinking and the resources that we have I don't know. They called Australian manufacturing a graveyard. Well, that's how they see it—the ones who made sure we had no car industry in Australia thanks to their decisions. These are the proof points that tell you that what those opposite are saying is not about Australia having a brighter future; it's about standing still or going backwards. I don't even know whether what they're doing would allow us to tread water. I reckon we'd be drowning pretty fast.

I'm very proud to be standing and supporting this bill. I challenge those opposite to take their heads out of the sand, look at the world we live in, look at the potential Australia has, and say to every Australian: 'You know what? We believe in you. We believe Australians can really rise to these challenges if they get support from government. Even better, what if they have the support of this whole parliament?' I'm very pleased to see us leading this charge, and I urge them to catch up.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, it will come as no surprise to you or those opposite or, indeed, those in the gallery that the coalition will oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. At the heart of that opposition is something that I want to pick up from the contribution of the last government speaker. Those opposite want to paint a picture that, without financial support from government, manufacturing is dead in this country, and I've got to tell you nothing is further from the truth. Those opposite think it is for government to decide which manufacturing businesses should succeed. Those of us on this side of the House think that is a decision best made in a competitive context by businesses themselves. Those opposite want to pick winners; those on this side want to create an economic environment where winners can self-identify and succeed.

This bill isn't a bill for greater business investment. Let's be clear: it's a bill about more and bigger government. Now, it's not a bill about slightly bigger government or modestly bigger government; it's a bill about gargantuanly bigger government, particularly with tentacles into the business sector. And it's a $22.7 billion commitment. If you say that quickly, it doesn't sound like a lot of money. But perhaps I can break it down. That's $22,700 million—in this bill alone. So, those opposite are asking of the coalition, of the parliament and, by deference, of the Australian people that they trust the Prime Minister with $22,700 million of taxpayer funds which he will distribute in the best interests of industry.

This is a Prime Minister who couldn't facilitate a $275 reduction in energy bills. Now, to be honest, I thought deeply about this, and I thought, I don't know who I trust least with a dollar of my money, let alone $22,700 million of Australian taxpayer money—the Prime Minister, the Minister for Industry and Science or the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. But the reality is that that's the mix of office holders in this place who'll be given the great privilege of distributing these funds.

Those opposite want to talk down manufacturing. I'm here to tell you that I am an advocate for talking it up. Barker, my electorate, has more full-time-equivalent employees who are engaged in manufacturing than any other division in this place. We're proud to carry that title. And it's principally in food manufacturing, a great strength of this country—weaponised, I'd argue, by the world-leading free trade agreements that the now opposition, when in government, was able to negotiate and install. Over the course of those nine or so years in government we saw an exponential growth in those sectors, and why shouldn't we? Australia enjoys incredible competitive advantages in this space: our clean-and-green image as well as the strength of our farming sector and, increasingly, our food manufacturing. So why wouldn't we be leaning into this space?

What those manufacturers need—those manufacturers that are operating today, not those that may be operating in the future—is affordable and reliable energy. They need flexible workplaces. They would love to see less regulation and red tape and of course an incentivised tax system. That's what this $22.7 billion, if it were available, should be invested in: creating a more competitive environment for all businesses to thrive, not just those that can be hand-picked in some sort of Labor bingo game. But that's not what's happening in this country right now—not at all. What's happening in this country right now is that industrial relations changes are making it harder for manufacturers. Labor's energy policy is making it harder for manufacturers to do business. As a result, productivity is down and insolvencies are up. That's the reality.

Those opposite, as if to have had an epiphany post the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, come into this place on a relatively regular basis—I'd argue almost daily—and plead with the Australian people to believe them when they say they have always had cost-of-living pressures that Australians experience first and foremost in their considerations since they've come to government. Of course, that's not the truth, because those opposite spent half a billion dollars on a vanity project taking this nation to an unnecessary and ultimately unsuccessful referendum around the Voice. All the while, as that debate raged, as Australians went to the ballot box, Australians were hurting. Over the period since Labor came to power, prices are up 10 per cent for working households, personal income tax is up by 20 per cent, real wages for employees have collapsed by nine the per cent, living standards have commensurately collapsed by eight per cent, household savings are down—and here's the kicker: a family with a typical mortgage is around $35,000 worse off.

Against that background and against the background of the Reserve Bank of Australia warning those opposite that we need to ensure monetary and fiscal policy is in lockstep, what do we see from those opposite? We see a gargantuan commitment to $22.7 billion. Those opposite want to argue this won't be inflationary. Well, of course it will be.

I mentioned earlier picking winners, and of course we can argue about the philosophy of command-and-control economics, but I want to remind those opposite that, not that long ago, the Prime Minister, the member for Hunter, the minister for climate change and the minister for science and industry went and celebrated an investment in a business that was proposing to manufacture photovoltaic-cell solar panels. And what did we hear not a week ago? Of course that business has made the decision to reduce its workforce by 35 people.

Now, the members opposite say industry needs the support of government. Absolutely it does. But it needs the support of government to reduce the cost and regulatory burdens that it experiences. There is a need for greater flexibility across the board, not for hand-picked specialists or specialist businesses that might just tickle an ideological want of this government and those opposite.

But don't take my word for it. Let's investigate what others have been saying. My favourite contribution in this space from others is from Steven Hamilton, the independent economist:

I thought we'd learned these lessons, but apparently not. The bad old days are back.

Well, some of us, I'd argue, have learnt these lessons, but the current administration has not. There are many problems with industry policy, and this proposed bill is a big one. Danielle Wood, the Chair of the Productivity Commission hand-picked by those opposite, said:

We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and that can be very effective in coming back for more.

She went on to paint a beautiful, very clear word picture when she said:

Your infants grow up, they turn into very hungry teenagers and it's kind of hard to turn off the tap.

I expect my parents went through that period when I was a very hungry teenager. The former Chairman of the Productivity Commission, Gary Banks, described the Future Made in Australia Bill as a 'fool's errand'. It's certainly an errand. I accept his assessment. It just had me wondering who the fool might be. So that's the contribution of others. And, quite appropriately, those opposite are fair—and the commentariat otherwise are fair—to ask, 'Well, what would you do? What would the coalition do?' because, ultimately, we're presenting ourselves as the alternative government.

We will take a back-to-basics approach. Firstly, we will do everything we can to rein in inflationary spending. We're not just saying this now. We have not just been saying it since the Voice referendum. The shadow Treasurer has been saying this from day one. In fact, before the now shadow Treasurer was installed by the now Leader of the Opposition to that office he was making that case. Secondly, we will wind back Labor's intervention and remove regulatory roadblocks, because that is what business is asking us to do as we meet with business.

Thirdly, we will remove the complexity and hostility of Labor's industrial relations agenda, which is putting unreasonable burdens on business. As I meet with employers and employees of those businesses, they remind me time and again of how much they value flexibility in the employment relationship. My father has operated farming businesses for much of his life, and my mother a retail business for over 45 years, until she retired. Some of her employees had been with her from day one. Those employees were more family than they were staff, and the idea that my mother's business relationship with her employees needed to be protected in some way by government legislation is offensive to her, but that's the nature of things. There is, in terms of the industrial relations space in this place, all of a sudden an us-and-them attitude when, in truth, in most successful businesses—in, I'd argue, all successful businesses—there's an us-and-us approach to industrial relations.

Equally, I met with hospitality employees recently who told me beseechingly that they didn't want to transition away from casual employment, because they enjoyed and, indeed, needed the leave loading. Those opposite need to understand this: people make decisions that meet their life's circumstances. But I'm off track.

The fourth thing we will do is provide lower, simpler and fairer taxes for all, which will mean that Australians can genuinely keep more of what they earn for themselves. Fifthly, we will deliver competition policy that gives consumers and small businesses a fair go—and that includes the farmers in my electorate, who are very much celebrating that and hoping for that prospect. Sixthly, we will ensure Australians have more affordable and more reliable energy. As a member in this place from South Australia, can I tell you that we have lived, and are living, the all-in renewables experiment. Whether it was the blackout or the highest energy costs in the country, I'm telling you, the experiment is failing. And those opposite want to extend that experiment to the whole of the nation.

This is a bad bill. It's a rotten bill. We oppose it, and those opposite should think again, in the interests of all Australians.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A Future Made in Australia is just that. It's a positive vision for the future of this country that will ensure that we make more things here, diversify what we produce and represent a major step forward in making the Australian economy more prosperous and more resilient. This is our government seizing the opportunities that come as part of the global economy and the transition to net zero, a future powered by renewable energy as we make Australia a renewable energy superpower, and facilitating the private sector investment that is required to make Australia a critical part of the global net zero economy.

At the heart of this is our government's determination to set Australians up for a better future. This is the work we are doing every day. That's why a Future Made in Australia is so critical. It ensures that Australia is taking up the opportunities we have to drive the clean economy opportunities, the jobs of the future, as we also tackle the climate crisis that is in front of us. Our government understands how important it is that Australia make the most of the opportunities that are there in this transition, that we make Australia a global leader in renewable energy, and that we take the jobs and the opportunities, the manufacturing and the industries, that are there for us to build and to support.

Our government understands this. We understand this work is critical for now and into the future. But, of course, those opposite just want to say no to this work. The Liberals and the Nationals do not want to build a secure and prosperous future for this country. They have no interest, it seems, in a secure and prosperous economy into the future. They fall back on their negativity and their denial. We saw that in the decade of denial and drift when they were in power. It is not surprising that Australians only need to look across the other side and see the actions of the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberals and the Nationals, who continue to enable the climate denialists in their ranks to call the shots and set a path for Australia that fails to seize the opportunities that are there in front of us. They're failing to take the action we need to tackle the climate crisis, build a stronger and more resilient country, and set us all up for a better future.

The Future Made in Australia legislation includes a range of principles to ensure that our investments are promoting safe, secure, well-paid jobs with good conditions and developing a skilled, inclusive workforce. It's taking a collaborative approach to engaging local communities, including all those communities that will be crucial to our transition to net zero. Those are communities right across our country, in regional areas and metro areas, like mine. It's strengthening Australia's domestic industrial capabilities and our local supply chains. It's demonstrating transparency and compliance with Australia's tax system.

This legislation brings us closer to our vision for a prosperous future for all Australians, helping us secure our country's place in the shifting global economic and strategic landscape. We see it across the world. We see it in the United States, where the drive to invest in renewables has been huge. There are opportunities for our country in this. We do not have to let it be that other countries benefit from this transition and that we miss out, as has happened in the past. This is our opportunity to benefit from this massive global transition. We as a country have been delivered an incredible set of cards that will make us the beneficiary of this global net zero transition if we do the work right and take up the opportunity, which is what this government is doing.

What we see from those opposite is negativity, saying 'no' again. What they're really saying to Australians and the communities who want to see this action, who want to see us build a stronger and cleaner future, is that they don't care about your future. They are saying that they are not interested in the clean, green jobs of the future. The coalition does not want to see our country and our communities put in the best possible position to embrace the opportunities that will come from Australia being a renewable energy superpower. It seems they do not want to make more things here in Australia. They don't want to help make Australia's economy more resilient and secure now and into the future. Those opposite seem to be more focused on prosecuting their niche clauses and climate denialism. And, of course, we have those opposite continuing to push a nuclear frolic, which is the most expensive of all the options in front of our country in terms of the transition to net zero, with technology that so far is unproven and with no social licence for that work. This is the new curtain, I guess, that you put up around your climate denialism so that nobody realises it's still just climate denialism. It is not a positive plan for the future of this country. It is not going to secure us the industries, jobs and manufacturing of the future. Once again, those opposite demonstrate a complete lack of interest in doing the work that you would expect of an opposition that is saying to the Australian people, 'We are ready to govern and doing the work to set our country up for the future.'

This bill will unlock private investment in future industries and bring new jobs and opportunities to communities across the country. It's about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero and securing Australia's place in the changing global, economic and strategic landscape. It will help us build a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy, one powered by renewable energy. It will help us to create more secure, well-paid jobs. It will encourage and facilitate the private sector investment that makes Australia an indispensable part of the global net zero economy. It recognises that our future growth lies at the intersection of our industrial skills and energy bases and it positions us as an investment destination as this work happens across the globe. As I said, it absolutely builds on the natural advantages we have in renewable energy alongside those traditional strengths we have in areas like resources, manufacturing and building new opportunities, including green metals, clean energy technologies and low-carbon liquid fuels.

The bill imposes rigour on government decision-making and it helps give investors the certainty they need to invest and unlock the growth that is possible in our economy. As I've said, this transition is happening around the world, even while those opposite would like to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it's not. This bill allows our country to seize the opportunities for that transition.

We see at the moment that supply chains across the world are under pressure, with increasing fragmentation and global competition. So the new opportunities emerging in clean energy industries are what will shape our economy and the global economy over the next decade and beyond. We are ideally placed to benefit from these global transitions underway due to our comparative advantages, our capabilities and our trade partnerships. We know that the private sector is responding to these opportunities, but there is absolutely also a role for government in creating a positive framework and environment for these investments as the momentum builds towards a net zero economy. We want to ensure that public investment and the private investment it attracts flows to communities in ways that benefit local workers and businesses. This transition will only work if we bring people with us. That is the opportunity, again, for jobs and industries right around the country in regions and in communities like mine where we do develop more skilled and inclusive workforces. Of course, we've been putting the resources into fee-free TAFE to make sure that we are building the skilled workforce of the future that we need to support this. We're working with diverse communities to make sure that what happens in this transition benefits not just not just our big manufacturers, big companies and our broader economy but every Australian.

We know that Australian business is getting on with this transition already. Certainly in my electorate of Jagajaga, I have been very pleased to engage with Leeson, a really innovative local solar company driving new ways of working and investment in solar innovation and industries locally in Heidelberg West and beyond. This is our government supporting that sort of work. Supporting that innovation will mean that the jobs and investments of the future are there for all of us.

We know that those opposite have a track record of failing to support Australian manufacturing. We saw that track record when they told the car industry that they could just pack up and go. Guess what? They packed up and left. I have seen the impact of that in my own community in Heidelberg West, where the manufacturing hub that was there, connected to that industry, has really fallen apart from what it was. We see what happens when governments, like those opposite, make decisions that are not in the interest of Australian manufacturing and Australian jobs. That's what happened when they made those decisions about our car industry and told it to leave. We know what the consequences of those opposite's nuclear frolic will be: climate denialism, a lack of action for a boondoggle, or a mirage of some possible future hugely expensive solution. That seems to be what those opposite are focused on at the moment rather than the positive future that this bill sets up.

I know that people in my community are passionate about making sure that our country is doing all it can to tackle the climate crisis. This bill is about us seizing the economic opportunities that have come alongside doing the work to tackle the climate crisis, setting our country up to be a superpower when it comes to renewable energy, to take the opportunities that are there, and to build the jobs and industries of the future. I commend the bill to the House.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the Albanese government's Future Made in Australia Bill and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No 1) Bill 2024. You have to give it to those opposite and their strategists—they really do come up with some very meaningful sounding titles for their legislation. Think of it, in just the last few months we've had the 'cost-of-living tax cuts', the 'nature positive' bills, the 'help to buy' housing package. And here we have another clever slogan with Future Made in Australia. How could anyone possibly be opposed to such proposed laws that sound so wonderful and so positive, like they're really trying to solve a problem? Well, unfortunately, again and again, the substance and the results of Labor's legislation fails to live up to the promise of these titles. Those opposite are consistent, if nothing else.

Times are tough right now, and I don't get any pleasure in saying that Australians are struggling more than ever before. Since Labor came to office just over two years ago, personal income taxes are up by 20 per cent, real wages have collapsed by nine per cent, living standards have fallen by eight per cent, household savings are down by 10 per cent, and families with a typical mortgage of $750,000 are roughly $35,000 worse off. Businesses aren't immune to higher inflation, either. They also have to manage higher rents, higher mortgage repayments, higher energy bills, higher prices for goods and, of course, the consequences of their customers having less buying power. It's no surprise that last financial year was the worst year on record for business insolvency, with some 10,757 businesses becoming insolvent.

Our country is in an entrenched GDP-per-capita recession, and the only reason Australia's GDP is growing—barely growing, I might add, with just 0.1 per cent growth in the last quarter—is because under Labor we've seen the highest net migration in our nation's history. Obviously, this record migration is causing problems of its own. It's shrinking housing vacancies and driving up rents and housing costs when Australians can least afford it. Australians expect their government to act on these issues, and why shouldn't they? Who can forget the central promise of the 2022 election campaign, that life would be better and cheaper under a Labor government led by Prime Minister Albanese? A solemn promise from the 'my word is my bond' prime minister.

While Labor's policies might sound good at first glance, they are clearly failing to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. They are not bringing down inflation, nor are they laying the groundwork for the Reserve Bank to start cutting interest rates. I must say, it's unfortunate that Australia is an outlier when it comes to fighting inflation, with our core inflation sitting at 3.9 per cent. We are the only G10 nation where core inflation has gone up compared to December figures. There's a reason we're at the back of the pack, and it's because of our prime minister's failed policies and misplaced priorities. I'm talking about the $315 billion in extra spending. I'm talking about the plan to remove 90 per cent of our 24/7 baseload power. I'm talking about our Prime Minister's focus on ideological pet projects instead of getting back to basics, which is what Australia wants and deserves.

Unfortunately, with the introduction of this legislation, the government is doubling down on those policy failures. With these bills, the government is expanding the role of Export Finance Australia and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to intervene in the market by funding and propping up domestic industries and manufacturing. With this proposed legislation, Labor are again saying that Australia can become a renewable energy superpower and that they will subsidise the development of domestic solar panel and battery manufacturing. Productivity Commissioner Danielle Wood, the government's key economic adviser, appointed by the Treasurer, has said:

If we are supporting industries that don't have a long-term competitive advantage, that can be an ongoing cost. It diverts resources, that's workers and capital, away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high value uses.

We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and that can be very effective in coming back for more.

So this bill doesn't just mean billions of dollars in more government spending today; it potentially bakes in billions of dollars for decades to come to continue to sustain industries that simply aren't commercially viable—billions that this parliament will have no say over and that will not undergo appropriate analysis. So much for the promises of transparency that the Australian people got just over two years ago! Remember that?

You only have to look at the government's $1 billion investment in solar manufacturing through the Solar Sunshot program to be concerned with the approach those opposite are taking. We know that the Treasury department were not consulted prior to this investment decision. That's a real shame, because Treasury's subsequent analysis has said that it is not a sound investment. Similarly, the $1 billion investment in American company PsiQuantum appears equally questionable, given that a non-binding agreement with the company was entered into two months prior to the expression-of-interest process. Again, it appears that $1 billion of taxpayer money has been rolled out independent of department appraisal, analysis or recommendation. The bills before us do not make the process for investment any less opaque.

While I disagree with the government's approach and will be opposing the bills, I am glad that we are talking about the importance and the future of manufacturing in this country. Over 900,000 Australians are employed in manufacturing, and I would love to see that number grow. However, the reality is that Australia has several fundamental factors that make us uncompetitive compared to foreign markets: our corporate tax rate is much higher than the OECD average; our energy costs are on the rise; our industrial relations system is far too complicated and costly; we have far too much red and green tape, making it difficult to do business in this country; and our isolation from foreign markets means transportation costs also must be considered. Obviously, we can't control that last point I mentioned, but business leaders have an idea of where we can start. The President of the Business Council of Australia has said:

Our competitors (think Canada, the US, and across Asia) 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.

That's what the coalition will do: focus on the fundamentals, not slogans and ideological fairytales.

On energy, we haven't been deterred by the fearmongering and childish memes of those opposite, and we have announced we plan to incorporate zero-emissions nuclear power into Australia's energy grid. This is a long-term plan to deliver safe, affordable and reliable energy whilst reaching net zero by 2050, which the coalition is committed to. To achieve this target we can't simply rely upon renewables. That is a fantasy that even foreign left-wing governments can't comprehend. Let me remind the House that out of the 20 largest economies in the world, Australia is the only one without nuclear or without plans to move towards it. Moving from a mix of renewables, gas and coal to renewables, gas and nuclear will ensure our grid works 24/7 and is not reliant upon weather patterns. Let's not forget that manufacturing, which the legislation before us is supposedly meant to assist, is incredibly energy intensive. How can they have confidence with reliable 24/7 baseload power under this current government?

We've also committed to rolling back the complexity and hostility of Labor's industrial relations agenda threatening Australia's small, medium and large businesses. We all know that the process was about rewarding Labor's paymasters in the union movements, including unions like the CFMEU. In terms of red and green tape, we will prioritise condensing approval processes and cut back on Labor's red tape, which is killing mining jobs and entrepreneurialism. Of course those opposite have no plan to act on the fundamentals I just mentioned and will make the economic environment even worse with their commitment to failing energy, industrial relations and economic policies.

I'll also take this opportunity to reassert my commitment to the people of Western Australia. It has been a highlight of my parliamentary career to have fought and won policy battles on behalf of my state. While we have the Prime Minister preorganising photo opportunities surrounding our GST agreement, let's not forget who actually delivered that—it was the federal WA Liberal team together with Prime Minister Morrison. Without that agreement, WA would currently be receiving around 12 cents back for every dollar that we contribute.

Given this history, I won't be lectured to by those opposite about how to stand up for Western Australia. Indeed, one of the most laughable things I've heard from those opposite is that with this legislation they're all of a sudden champions for WA's mining and resources sector. Nothing could be further from the truth. As my electorate of Durack is home to much of Western Australia's resources sector, I meet with representatives from the sector regularly. Let me tell you that when I meet with those many many representatives, they certainly don't give the government a glowing reference. These claims are being made at the same time as we see the mining industry in the Pilbara and BHP currently combating clumsy union power grabs made possible by this government's disastrous and reckless industrial relations reform. Chris Rodwell, Chief Executive of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia has said:

The last thing WA and our nation needs is industrial chaos on our mining sites, allowing unions to effectively hold our economy to ransom.

Labor's grand plans and claims are also being made while the Minister for the Environment and Water is considering the inclusion of a climate trigger as part of her Nature Positive plan. According to new research by the Institute of Public Affairs, a climate trigger would put more than $220 billion worth of investment at risk. Of that $220 billion, $112 billion would be in my home state of Western Australia. This is on top of adding further green tape through the duplication of environmental approval processes that already exist at state and territory levels. Do those opposite realise that this will hold up new critical minerals and hydrogen projects, which apparently they support as part of their renewables revolution?

To the Minister for Resources, who during her contribution to the debate challenged me to take a position on this legislation and who consistently talks up government support for the mining industry, can the minister confirm how she feels about more red tape? I'd also like to hear if the minister supports WA's ban on uranium mining. Earlier this year at COP 28 there was a major push to triple global nuclear power by 2050. Australia is home to a third of the world's uranium reserves, most of which are in Western Australia. The obvious question is: why don't we get mining and help the world to get to net zero, grow the economy and create more good paying jobs in the meantime? It's also worth noting that this government's supposed support in this bill for the resources sector doesn't apply to things like gas, uranium, blue hydrogen or carbon capture and storage. Explain that.

While Labor talk a big game on critical minerals, the help they are proposing with this legislation only comes into play when those companies begin to turn a profit. Well, that's little good to companies like Nickel West, who are currently going underwater right now, or to the junior miners who are struggling to get projects off the ground.

Western Australians are not mugs. They understand that Labor will always be more interested in appeasing inner-city voters on the east coast—they know that—rather than securing well-paying jobs in our regions. They also understand that structural reform is required to support all businesses' growth, not just sections of the economy that Labor ideologically obsess over or make snap decisions to get behind. Australia is at a crossroads. We all want a future made in Australia, but this rubbish legislation is certainly not the way that it's going to happen. I do not support this legislation.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer announced during the 2024-25 budget our $22.7 billion plan to make us an indispensable part of the global economy with a future made right here in Australia. The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024 will deliver on key elements of the Albanese Labor government's Future Made in Australia plan to return manufacturing onshore and bring Australian know-how back to the table.

We have not wasted any time on this side of the House. We are crafting programs and reforms to diversify our economy and build our sovereign capability, which, sadly, has been neglected for too long. We are investing in our workers and skilling the future workforce with a $10 million energy future skills centre at the University of Wollongong and a $2.5 million renewable energy training centre at Wollongong TAFE, and who could forget the half a million fee-free TAFE places across this country? We are supporting our homegrown industries to create a pipeline of well-paid and secure jobs, not just now but also into the future.

It is an absolute priority for our government to support businesses to invest, to grow and to embed innovation instead of moving offshore. These two bills represent significant advancements to reshape our national economy by strengthening local industry and reducing reliance on international supply chains. This is vital for regions and regions like the Illawarra. It will help Australia to attract investment into key industries to make our country a renewable energy superpower. We must ensure that Australia can navigate global challenges while developing domestic innovation, sustainability and economic resilience.

Whilst the Illawarra is well known as a steel city, we are now revolutionising the world of clean energy technology too. One company that I have spoken about a lot in this parliament is Hysata in Port Kembla. Hysata is on the brink of manufacturing the world's most effective hydrogen electrolysers, with their technology currently 21 per cent more efficient than anything else on the market, and that is Illawarra's innovation at its finest. Hysata is a truly homegrown story, starting their journey at the University of Wollongong's Australian Institute for Innovative Materials and then beginning their breakthrough with the university's business incubator at iAccelerate. Earlier this year, they celebrated the southern hemisphere's largest-ever series B capital raise of $172 million, and the Albanese Labor government was very proud to support this venture with a $15 million investment through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The world's hard-to-abate sectors are chomping at the bit, waiting for their expansion of manufacturing at their Port Kembla facility to reach gigawatt-scale production of its electrolyser to tackle mass decarbonisation.

But startups like these can't keep up the heavy lifting on their own. Paul Barrett, Hysata's CEO, summed it up perfectly this morning. He said:

Hysata has performed astoundingly in attracting private capital, but for companies like us to thrive and be globally competitive, we're going to need access to incentives like those provided overseas.

These incentives are what the Future Made in Australia Bill stands to offer, and why Hysata has openly endorsed it in our recent submission.

The fact is that the new 'no-alition' between the Liberal Party and the Australian Greens political party is actually discouraging Australian manufacturing and trying to push them out the door and out of the country. That is unbelievable.

On this side of the House, we proudly have faith in Australian ideas, Australian know-how, Australian workers, Australian scientists and Australian businesses. Our businesses are crying out for the support, and Paul couldn't have been clearer in his remarks this morning. He said:

Through Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Hysata has been a recipient of Government support along our journey. The international confidence in our technology is in part to their contribution. But for that confidence to lead to building a company that offers Australians a future, we need policy that acknowledges and supports the strengths of local industry and innovation. We have seen support for industries like Hysata's span several Governments, and it's time to have decisive action to get these critical policies passed.

As the Prime Minister said yesterday, it's clear that the biggest threat to Australian jobs and investment is not international uncertainty or changes in the global economy; it's those sitting opposite. They voted against the National Reconstruction Fund, against more social housing and against energy bill relief—unbelievable. Our Future Made in Australia plan will help Australia build a stronger, more diverse and more resilient economy powered by renewable energy. It will create secure, well-paid jobs and encourage the private sector investment that is needed to make Australia a key player in the global net zero economy.

This bill has three components. The first one embeds the government's National Interest Framework, which was announced during the budget, to help identify sectors where Australia has a genuine comparative advantage in the net zero economy or an economic security imperative. The second one establishes a robust sector assessment process to understand and remove barriers to private investment. It also establishes a set of community benefit principles that will make sure relevant Future Made in Australia investments create strong returns for local communities, workers and business.

The National Investment Framework identifies two primary streams for intervention. There is the net zero transformation stream, which targets industries essential for achieving Australia's climate goals, as well as the economic resilience and security stream, which focuses on sectors critical to national security and economic stability. Priority industries under these streams includes renewable hydrogen, critical minerals processing and clean energy technologies.

Our plan will play a key role in making more things in Australia. It will drive economic development in our regions and outer suburbs, like the Illawarra. This plan will go a long way in supporting manufacturers like Gravitas Technologies, in my electorate, who are producing two groundbreaking materials, georock and vulloy. Georock is arguably the world's most advanced and safest treatment of nuclear waste. It is already being commissioned by the UK and USA governments. The second product, vulloy, is a metallic ceramic product that has a significant weight-saving advantage for flight applications and can withstand ultrahigh temperatures, up to 2,000 degrees Celsius.

There are currently no comparable global competitors for this technology, and the Wollongong company are currently supporting projects across a wide range of sectors, including defence, aerospace and industrial markets. All of this has been developed in Wollongong over the past 10 years by a young and relatively small team, including a majority of University of Wollongong graduates, which is great to see when I'm walking around the factory floor. These companies collectively highlight the Illawarra region's pivotal role in driving Australian manufacturing towards a sustainable and innovative future, reinforcing its importance to the national economy and the global competitiveness of our Australian industries.

We want to ensure public investment and the private investment it attracts flow to communities in ways that benefit local workers and businesses, like in my region of the Illawarra. That is why a set of community benefit principles will be applied to Future Made in Australia supports that have been identified in this bill. The Albanese Labor government's goal is to ensure that these investments promote safe, secure and well-paid jobs with good working conditions. We are committed to developing a more skilled and inclusive workforce by investing in training and skills development while broadening opportunities for workforce participation. This approach not only benefits employees but also strengthens the overall economy by creating a more capable and adaptable workforce.

We also want these public and private investments to be able to work in collaboration with local communities, including First Nations communities and those directly impacted by the transition to a net zero economy. By focusing on achieving positive outcomes for these communities, we ensure that the benefits of these investments are widespread and inclusive, fostering stronger social cohesion and supporting regional development. The government is dedicated to strengthening domestic industrial capabilities by reinforcing local supply chains. We want to ensure transparency and compliance in managing tax affairs, including the benefits received under the Future Made in Australia supports. This is essential in maintaining public trust and ensuring that these investments contribute meaningfully to the broader economy.

Since we've come to government we've had a 25 per cent increase in renewables, record investment in batteries and storage, and over 330,000 rooftop solar installations in just the last year alone. We live in a country that is rich with boundless opportunities for renewable energy, and we are harnessing them for a Future Made in Australia.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Future Made in Australia bills have lovely-sounding names, and I think all members of this chamber would be interested in a future made in Australia. But the more you read the actual detail of these bills, the more you realise that what's being proposed doesn't stack up. The coalition fears that this is a plan for pork-barrelling, not for a strong economy, and members on this side will be opposing these bills.

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. 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 a pure R&D demonstration to support manufacturing deployment and commercialisation. In essence, this is very much a plan for more government, not more business investment. It's a plan that, unfortunately, will drive forward further inflation, at a time when Australian households can least afford it.

Australian families are already paying the price, having endured 12 interest rate hikes under this government, and unfortunately we're facing some of the most stubborn core inflation in the developed world, and of course we are going to see the economic impacts of that for quite a while to come. Australian families shouldn't be paying for Labor's re-election strategy, which they would be doing if this bill were to pass. Governments can't solve the cost-of-living crisis by throwing hard-earned taxpayers money around in such a manner. The Prime Minister might want to pick winners, but Australian families will certainly be the losers if this process continues as envisaged.

When I speak to the manufacturers who are operating within my electorate, they say they don't want governments to be picking winners within the industry. They simply want government to get the basics right. I think that's the fundamental difference between the approaches on either side of the chamber. The government is keen to intervene in the market to pick the winners, to spend the money, whereas the coalition members, the members on this side, want to ensure that the basics are right, that the market is able to pick its own winners for the people who are delivering the manufacturing outcomes that we want, the manufacturing jobs of the future—that they come up naturally, organically, through the right settings that are in place by the government.

The manufacturers in my electorate simply want affordable and reliable energy. They want flexible workplaces. They want less regulation. And of course they'd love an incentive based tax system. I think that's the fundamental difference. Do we want to be interventionist and trying to pick winners? Or do we want to just be focusing on getting those basics right? Certainly the manufacturers in my electorate are telling me that's the role that they see for government. They see government as there to facilitate their growth, not to take a heavy hand in investing within the market. The sad reality is that Labor's policies on energy, industrial relations and tax are making Australia a less attractive place to do business. That's certainly the feedback that I've been getting from the manufacturers within my electorate who are looking to grow.

The facts are clear: insolvencies are up, productivity is down and businesses are struggling just to keep their doors open. Labor's plan with the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is unfortunately more about spin than about actual delivery. We see economist after economist criticise this policy. I'll touch on some of the comments that they've made shortly. Every day we hear more stories about processes that aren't being followed properly, the lack of economic scrutiny and the double standards that will apply to this program.

Let's start by having a look at the ARENA changes that are being proposed through these bills. The legislation fundamentally changes the purpose, duties and roles of ARENA. ARENA has always been a research and development agency. This is clear in its remit, in the explanatory memorandum and in the second reading speech that was given back when these bills were introduced. Labor, in opposition, even opposed expanding the remit to cover sensible net zero related R&D expenditure, including into carbon capture and storage, and blue hydrogen. They are expanding that remit even further into development and manufacturing because it suits the interests of those they wish to please. If ARENA is doing deployment, why is the CEFC even needed in that instance? We're seeing a muddying of the waters between those entities. If these industries aren't commercially viable, why are they receiving government funding in the first place?

Labor's changes are, unfortunately, more insidious than just a muddying of waters between the roles of different agencies. At the stroke of a pen this bill gives the Minister for Climate Change the ability to boost funding. It provides no opportunity for this parliament, for the other chamber or for any of our committees to provide the scrutiny that we would expect. We're talking about pretty significant funding and figures that will not face the same level of parliamentary oversight and scrutiny that we would expect. It's just some delegated legislation, and the government can roll up to $3.98 billion out the door in the course of this year, which would be, of course, an election year. Unfortunately, some have described this as a slush fund, and it's hard to argue with that.

Let's also have a look at the National Interest Framework. This legislation puts the Treasurer and his department in a position to decide whether a sector of the Australian economy deserves investment. Under this plan, the Treasurer will now be setting the conditions for business to operate and seek funding. His department will consider the investment against a very narrow set of criteria, and they have provided evidence to Senate estimates that key investments for Australia's energy future and sovereign capability—whether they be carbon capture and storage, gas, blue hydrogen, uranium or nuclear—will not be eligible and have not been considered as part of the framework. Meanwhile the so-called community benefit principles will entrench union involvement in the workplace and replicate much of the same social procurement policies that have enabled the CFMEU's conduct to go unchecked and that have left us in the mess that we've been trying to deal with over the last few days in this parliament.

This is not the way to build a healthy and productive economy—far from it. The Business Council has warned that these procurement rules are at risk of enabling this sort of behaviour, while it risks subsidising businesses Australia would never have a comparative advantage in. The BCA rightfully points out that this is important because taxpayers' dollars are at stake, and that should, of course, be the primary concern of parliamentarians here. The BCA have also made it clear that this is not the best path forward. The BCA president, Bran Black, has said that 'our competitors—think China, the US and across Asia—are more investment-friendly environments based on old-fashioned fundamentals, like tax and regulation' and that 'to reinvent our economy we must, as a point of national urgency, become a more competitive place to do business'. I think that's pretty fundamental. It should be a fairly uncontroversial thing for the president of the Business Council of Australia to say.

Let's have a look at what some of the others are saying about this. Danielle Wood, the chair of the Productivity Commission, who was appointed and hand-selected by this Treasurer, said:

If we are supporting industries that don't have a long-term competitive advantage, that can be an ongoing cost. It diverts resources, that's workers and capital, away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high value uses.

We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and that can be very effective in coming back for more.

I like this quote that Danielle Wood provided:

Your infants grow up, they turn into very hungry teenagers and it's kind of hard to turn off the tap.

As someone who's got two rapidly growing small children, I can certainly appreciate that. When asked whether Future Made in Australia contained tax reform, Ms Wood explicitly said it is 'not tax reform'. On alternative policies, including lowering the corporate tax rate, Ms Wood offered it would 'make us more internationally competitive'.

Former chair of the Productivity Commission Mr Gary Banks described Future Made in Australia as 'a fool's errand' that risks repeating mistakes of the past by propping up 'political favourites'. He went even further and said:

Seeking to obtain benefits to society through subsidies for particular firms or industries, including in the form of tax concessions, has proven a fool's errand, particularly where the competitive fundamentals are lacking.

Mr Banks likened the scheme to 'Hotel California', saying many will enter the program but few will ever leave. This morning, my Spotify account informed me that I have a boomer's taste in music, so I particularly enjoyed that reference to the Eagles. If I can build off Mr Banks's reference to the Eagles lyrics, I think the Treasurer's enjoying 'Life in the Fast Lane' and, through his legislation, is clearly trying to 'Take it to the Limit'. I implore him to reconsider this approach with those iconic lyrics of Glenn Frey and Don Henley: 'Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?' I'm hoping I might trigger a response from those opposite in due course.

Another eminent economist, Professor Richard Holden, said:

The PM says all the wrong things. … And his main argument for subsidies is that other countries are doing it. Like a primary school kid telling a teacher: "but he started it!"

We've got a litany of economists and economic commentators who are pointing us in the right direction. They are pointing us back to the fundamentals of economics. It's not just the economists, these people who've spent their lives studying the fundamentals, but also the manufacturers within the communities who we should be talking to. Certainly the manufacturers in my neck of the woods are all echoing these sentiments.

Steven Hamilton, an independent economist, said:

There are many problems with industry policy, and this is a big one. It's why I tend to favour more neutral investment incentives like a lower corporate tax rate or accelerated depreciation.

He also said:

I thought we'd learned these lessons, but apparently not. The bad old days are back.

When comparisons with the US IRA were drawn, Mr Hamilton said:

With this scale, it can produce at reasonable cost. [That] is a totally different proposition to doing so in Australia.

Without a large domestic market, exports are the only way for Australia to achieve scale. But we are so far away from the kinds of markets we could sell into that shipping costs put as at a distinct disadvantage. No amount of government subsidy is going to get around that.

I think that's a critical point. It does reach a point where no amount of government subsidy can keep some of these sectors going in Australia.

Let's have a look at how Labor's own investments line up against the standards that they've set for themselves. The Productivity Commission says that a billion-dollar commitment to make more solar panels in Australia under the Prime Minister's Future Made in Australia program should be retrospectively subjected to a tougher National Interest Framework test. It says, 'Allowing sectors to bypass the National Interest Framework process would undermine its role in disciplining spending.' Yet we know that Labor are already breaking their own rules when it suits them.

Key elements of Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda, including the PsiQuantum contract, bypass the National Interest Framework and sector assessments. I think the word PsiQuantum is going to be used in this chamber a lot over the coming year. There are serious questions to answer about the decision of the PsiQuantum contract, about the decision to make this investment, and about the processes that were followed. It's increasingly clear that the minister 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 subsequent analysis has said that it is not a sound investment. On the topic of PsiQuantum. I'm looking forward to the opportunity in October—I'm sure the member for Groom will agree—where, hopefully, a change of state government in Queensland may provide opportunity for greater scrutiny about the Queensland government's decision to invest in that program as well. It may lead to a few more questions being asked in this chamber about the appropriateness of that investment and whether it has met the standards that we expect.

Australians deserve something better than what is being proposed here, and the coalition wants to deliver that. That's why we are promising to do three things: we will steer our nation out of the current domestic crises; we will not simply talk about the challenges of our time but we will meet them head-on with action to carve out a more secure future; and, most importantly, we will make the decisions that set up our nation for success for generations to come. We need to make sure Australia can play to its strengths, and we're looking to build a nation that is a mining, manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse and a leader in technology and in innovation. We need to rein in inflationary spending, take the pressure off and provide the opportunity for these manufacturers to truly have success over the long term.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bowman, despite his relative youth, seemed to be stuck in the hazy west-coast 1970s—an attitude that it will be all right in the long run. It's a privilege to contribute to this debate—a debate about one of the most important policy agendas of the Albanese government. This bill, the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, represents the ambitions of this government to set this country up for growth and progress, to build a future here for our children and their children. It's another example of a government that is firmly focused on today and tomorrow, compared to an opposition with a narrow, straitened focus on a past—a past where, I dare say, they were responsible for too many opportunities missed. I know this better than some, as for much of their time in government I worked representing science and engineering professionals across the public and private sectors, and saw firsthand the consequences of their disinterest in manufacturing, research and innovation, and their disinterest in industry and science policy more broadly.

I recognise the many excellent contributions which have already been made by my colleagues on this side of the House. The number and quality of contributions reflect the commitment we have to pursuing this plan for the benefit of all Australians. We face a series of challenges on the national horizon, but these challenges come with opportunities if we are bold enough to grasp them, and Australians have always been bold when facing the future. When their governments join them in this boldness, the capacity of the Australian people to achieve greatness is limitless. We had nearly a decade of inaction and atrophy when those opposite occupied this side of the chamber. They did nothing to address the challenges of climate change, manufacturing and securing supply changes. It was a decade of lost opportunity. We on this side are going to catch up and make up for this wasted decade. This bill forms a key part of that catch-up.

What is before us today is straightforward. The principle underpinning it is simple. We on this side want Australia to be a country that makes things here. We used to be a country which made things. We made cars here, something that was lost thanks to the wilful destructiveness of those opposite. We have three critical reasons why we need to be, once again, a country which makes things: firstly, making things here will contribute positively to economic growth; secondly, making things here will create jobs—good, well-paying jobs; and thirdly, making things here will make us stronger and more secure by reducing our dependence on potentially vulnerable global supply chains. Underpinning all this is using this as an opportunity to take serious and meaningful action on climate change through promoting investment in renewable energy.

As the Treasurer said, this legislation is built on three pillars: first, a National Interest Framework, which will help us identify sectors where we have a sustained comparative advantage in the new net zero economy or in economic resilience and security imperative to invest; second, a robust sector assessment process to help us better understand and break down barriers to private investment in key areas of the economy; and, third, a set of community benefit principles that will ensure public investment and the private investment it generates leads to strong returns but also leads to stronger communities.

In short, through this bill and the broader $22.7 billion plan associated with it, our government is going to maximise the economic and industrial benefits of our transition to net zero while securing our nation's place in a changing international strategic and economic context. Most importantly, this bill was offered in the national interest. To be able to take practical action on climate change, grow our economy and strengthen our nation all in one piece of legislation is an unmissable opportunity for this parliament. We are motivated on this side by the national interest, and I encourage all those in this place who share these sentiments to support this bill.

This bill comes within our broader Future Made in Australia budget package. I mentioned its total value before, but it's worth mentioning again—$22.7 billion. That is a significant investment in the future of our nation. This package includes the Solar Sunshot, the Battery Breakthrough Initiatives, the National Interest Account, the production tax incentives for hydrogen and critical minerals and the Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund. This plan sends an unmistakable message to the world: Australia is part of the solution and very much open for business. We're not passengers. We will be able to attract and enable investment in these important areas and cement our place as an indispensable part of global supply chains.

The bill and the broader plan, while looking to promote our national interest, unashamedly looks to the world and our place in it. The world is changing, and we need to make sure that we keep up. Make no mistake: renewable energy is here to stay. Global markets have embraced the energy transition. Those who resist will be left well behind. The global economy is changing rapidly, and we must make sure Australia changes as well. The Future Made in Australia Bill will ensure we establish an enduring framework to underpin our national response to global economic changes and how we can take advantage of it.

This is a plan for Australia's future, a plan that begins right now. These sorts of debates are always instructive and interesting as to the views and mood of the House on the great questions of the day. I have listened to a few of the contributions from those opposite. In the face of our plan, our vision for A Future Made in Australia, they have had little to offer. There is no counterplan. There is no alternative vision. There is no constructive criticism. All we have heard is carping and empty words. Debates in this place are not about cheap, political pointscoring. Debates in this place are supposed to be about alternative visions for our country. The government has presented a vision and a plan to take that vision and turn it into a reality. I have yet to hear of a similar vision or plan from those opposite.

The closest we have come in this place to hearing something that closely resembles a vision from those opposite is their vision for a future powered by nuclear energy. We over here are talking about critical minerals, batteries and green hydrogen and articulating how we are going to use these opportunities to transform our country; those opposite are talking about nuclear power, but, as with their approach over the last decade, it's more distraction and inaction. There is no serious engagement with the significant challenges that nuclear power faces even to be a small part of our energy supply. There is no sensible conversation about cost, timing, location or workforce capacity. That's because, fundamentally, they're not serious. The nuclear thought bubble is a fig leaf to cover their opposition to meaningful action.

We over here are talking about something real, measurable and achievable. We over here are talking about aligning Australia with the global energy transition, whilst over there they're still talking about moving in the opposite direction—perhaps to an Eagles powered 1970s. We over here are talking about a plan to create jobs and grow our economy, whilst over there there is no plan for jobs or the economy. The contrast, in fact, could not be more stark.

We are all, in the end, judged by history, whether we like it or not. This bill and our plan for A Future Made in Australia are an effort to address and answer the great questions of our times: climate change, the energy transition, sustainable economic growth and the creation of well-paying and lasting jobs for the next generation and the generation that follows it. But in this debate we have heard nothing from those opposite that would indicate a willingness to offer a similar plan or vision. It's disappointing, but it's not my disappointment that matters. History will judge those opposite and the fact that, in the face of the great challenges facing us—in the fact of the most important questions of our times—again they had no answer and instead chose to play cheap political games.

In conclusion, the Future Made in Australia Bill is an important part of our plan to make things here, grow our economy, create jobs, join the global energy transition and make real and practical steps towards tackling climate change. This is a bold plan to set our country up for the future, starting today. I couldn't be prouder to be associated with it, and I commend the bill to the House.

Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will keep very briefly with the Eagles theme. My friend the good member for Bean, having served his sentence of having to speak for such an unfortunate bill, may well understand the sentiment, 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device,' but, having served his time, he can now take it easy, knowing that his job is done.

The coalition will, quite sensibly, oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, but there is one thing on which I very strongly agree with the member for Bean: this is quite a fundamental question. The question that this bill presents to the parliament is the age-old question which is presented to all Western democracies: are we to move towards a market economy or towards a command economy? This is reflected in the very shape of this House—the for and against, the government and the opposition, the left and the right. This is the debate. It's been shaped in many different ways in many different times, but this is such a fundamental question that faces us. I think that in this bill we see Labor's vision for the economy laid out very strongly. This is a vision of an economy led and directed by a very small chosen few. It's no surprise when we think that where market economies have survived is where free democracies have survived, where the choice of the people, the decision of the greatest number, is enabled in choosing the guidance of the nation, and that where command economies have survived is where there has been a top-down approach, be that through a dictator or through some form of communist set-up. There exists a very big split between those, and the choices we make in this chamber are often very much about which one of those two directions we should go in. That's exactly where we find ourselves now. I will just say that I think this speaks to something more. It speaks to the idea that the economy and the society that wraps around it cannot be separated. Do we choose to be directed more firmly by the government, or do we allow the invisible hand to make its way?

So this is a fundamental question and, when assessing this question, I would say that, for the Australian people themselves, the best way to assess the government is on their performance. I would ask the people of Australia, 'Are you better off under Labor? Are you better off than you were before this government came to power?' Sadly, we can look around and see the resounding answer to that, by almost every metric is, 'No, we're not.' Insolvencies are up—we see that in today's Australian. We're heading towards record levels of insolvencies. Productivity is down. The greatest drop in productivity since we started measuring productivity has happened under this term of government. Prices are up across the board by 10 per cent—18 per cent for working households. New houses have increased 19.7 per cent, bread and milk around 19 per cent. The prices of gas and electricity—the energy debate that forms such a key staple of the election we just had—have risen by over 20 per cent. No, we're not better off.

What's important to know is that this is not by accident. There have been very firm and set policies similar to this one here from this government that have taken us down this direction. If you want to pin down a starting point, I would suggest you have a look at the 6,000-word essay by the Treasurer on how he was going to remake capitalism and how we were going to change our pathway completely from the market economy we've enjoyed and has driven us to be the most successful countries in the history of the world. We're going to move away from that to something called the care economy. I think what comes to mind is that age-old saying that when someone tells you who they are you should trust them. The Treasurer very much told us what he was going to do. He was leading us down this path.

Look at our immigration policy, with the largest ever immigration intake in the middle of a housing crisis, making things worse at a time when our housing supply is at record low levels. It's no accident how we got there. Direct policy choices take us there. Price caps on gas have led, like they always have since the beginning of time, to higher prices. We've got IR legislation that has been panned by industry for its capacity to drive down productivity at a time, as I mentioned, when productivity has fallen more than it ever has before.

We have a government that boasts two surpluses, but in their own budget papers confirm 10 years of deficits to follow. What an incredible choice to have made. Two surpluses for 10 deficits. I'm not sure we got a good bargain there, but that's a deliberate policy choice. Of course, what this adds up to is that we see things like real wages dropping nine per cent. People are worse off, and it's not by accident. It's because of policies exactly like this.

In the Future Made in Australia Bill, what we see is a government that wants to take further control of the economy. I think it's right that we stop and we look at the direction the country is going in. On questions of where the economy is being led, we have a Treasurer currently so ideologically driven that he's quite happy to fight with the RBA openly in a period where we're trying to work together. We need the RBA and the government's fiscal and monetary policies to work together to bring inflation down. He's allowing his ideology to get in the way of that.

I will give a brief moment of praise—because I think it's always good to find the diamond that shines in the river—for the simple audacity of this government. Following the 2022 election, when the byword was 'integrity', to produce so brazen a slush fund as this is quite brazen—a $4 billion slush fund that can be increased merely at the stroke of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy's pen. No parliamentary oversight required, no scrutiny. This is a slush fund, plain and simple. I think John Kehoe in the AFR wrote this best when he said:

Labor's Future Made in Australia election slogan is already turning into a taxpayer-funded slush fund to spray money around for almost any political objective the Albanese government can think of.

It's quite damning to read those words out loud, but that is exactly what it is.

I think the more we look into it, the worse this looks. The member for Bowman raised the issue of PsiQuantum. What really irks Australians who are hurting at the moment is when they see the actions of the government and it looks like money for mates. Sadly, the more you look at it that is exactly what it appears to be. I'll read from an Australian article from Geoff Chambers and Joe Kelly under the headline 'ALP network behind company that clinched $1bn deal':

Two Labor-linked firms employed by US-based company PsiQuantum helped the private tech business facilitate nearly $1bn in taxpayer funds to build the world's first fault-tolerant quantum computer in Brisbane…

Brookline Advisory lobbyists … —who worked as chief of staff for Labor deputy leader Richard Marles and communications director to Jim Chalmers respectively—have emerged as key players in securing the government equity and loans package.

It goes further. There are significant links between, on one hand, the company who then were commissioned by PsiQuantum to prepare a report about the benefits of PsiQuantum and, on the other, the offices of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Bill Shorten and the member for Parramatta as well. So we have here something that looks very much like money for mates, but sadly—and here's the bit where it gets really bad—it's not just money for mates; it's money for mates for nothing. I'm going to read from Bernard Keane, that renowned right-wing nutjob:

Note that we won't actually get a quantum computer for that money, just access to one if and when it's built in Brisbane. Maybe that's what a "Future Made In Australia" will look like—foreign companies paid vast amounts of money to build things here but keep ownership of them.

The more we look at what's being proposed by the government, the more it falls away and becomes a less and less credible alternative for Australians.

Strangely, though, in the Prime Minister's defence of this bill, he's pointed to the Biden government's Inflation Reduction Act. Despite obviously significant differences in our economies, in our labour market flexibility and in our relative manufacturing industries, he has pointed to that act as an example of why we should go down this path. As it stands at the moment, that act has driven $110 billion in investment in the US. However—and this is a rather important point—it is now on track to cost US taxpayers over $800 billion across the next decade. This is the key issue when you go down the pathway of picking winners. When you don't have a market economy but instead have a command economy, when you are not choosing which way the market will move based on competitive advantage or the dictates of supply and demand but are picking winners, and when you are fundamentally providing a subsidy to an unviable or uncompetitive industry, that industry now has to rely upon subsidies to sustain itself. Once you start that, there are only two pathways: either you keep going with the subsidies forever and ever or, at the point that you stop the subsidies, the industry falls apart. What we're seeing already with that Inflation Reduction Act is the costs spiralling because subsidies, once started on an unproductive or unviable industry, will have to keep flowing, so we're committing ourselves to further and further spiralling spending just to keep these industries alive.

We could speak on a number of other areas we've come across, but at the heart of this is this singular debate laid out very clearly for us in the 6,000-word vision of our Treasurer. Should we be guided by his hand or by that of the market? Should we listen to the market response, or should we be driven by political imperatives, by slush funds, by demands of mates and by industries that are aligned for political objectives? I ask the question again to the Australian people: are you better off? If you want to assess this bill, ask whether you are better off. This is exactly at the heart of this government's agenda. This could not be a more Labor driven bill.

Have a look at where the rest of their policies have taken us. We're the only G10 nation where inflation has been going up since December. We have an entrenched GDP per capita recession. Today we saw the jobless numbers going up. The RBA confirmed that the only pathway for improvements in productivity that the RBA is mapping out at the moment is increased unemployment. Sadly, we have insolvency numbers going up. That's not just businesses going down; that is people losing their jobs. That's families having to make very tough decisions as the money coming into the household dries up.

I want to speak to one point, and I think you could not get a greater demonstration of this than the member for Bean's contribution. Compare the derision aimed at the nuclear industry to the support for the green hydrogen industry. When you compare the relative technology readiness levels of those two industries, it is laughable that a political position could be established on one versus the other. It's quite comical. The nuclear industry has a competitive advantage in Australia. We produce it. I've worked at two nuclear mines. We produce it safely and efficiently. We provide it around the world. We are excellent at it. Our expertise in how to do it is sought by other nations. We have a domestic need for it. That's an industry that could be supported. It has a competitive advantage. It's made here and we have the expertise. It is in our ground.

Compare that to green hydrogen, which is at a technology readiness level of 1 or maybe 1½. It is not used. There is not a buyer for it. It is not being bought. There could not be a more damning example of this than Mr Forrest's actions. Two weeks after securing an $8 billion commitment of subsidies for the production of green hydrogen, he walked away from it. The government has been asking for costings of nuclear. I can tell you what we know costings for hydrogen are: they're more than $8 billion. We know it's going to take more than $8 billion in subsidies to stay in or create a green hydrogen industry in Australia. What a comical difference that a political party could choose between those two. I think it speaks to the intent and the problems with a bill like this. When you are command-driven, when you have a command economy, where a government or a select few pick winners, you make terrible mistakes, and those mistakes have consequences.

We very sensibly oppose this bill. We do so on grounds that are fundamental to our beliefs. I think it's very clear where the government wants to drive this economy: further and further under the dictate of a chosen few.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia has an incredibly bright future, but it's up to this parliament as to exactly how bright that future is. We can choose to grab the opportunities that are in front of us or we can choose, as those opposite seek to do, to turn down the dimmer switch. We want this parliament to make a big strategic decision to choose Australia's future, to choose a future made here in Australia. Indeed, the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is a choice: a choice to be a country that makes things here or a country that only imports things, a choice to be a country that exports new energy and the products of the net zero transformation or that watches exports dry up as our customers switch to clean energy and we choose not to, a choice to secure the jobs for not just the next generation but for many generations to come or to see those jobs go to our international competitors, a choice to attract private investment—again, this bill is about attracting private investment. We can choose to open that door to private investors or we can choose to shut the door and say, 'No, we've got it all under control, but we're instead choosing to spend $600 billion of government money on nuclear reactors owned by the government.' It's about choosing our future or choosing to stick with the lost opportunities of relentless negativity.

I had a little bit of time on my hands yesterday, so I went through the Hansard on this debate from yesterday. I saw exactly what a policy-free zone the opposition have become. We saw the member for New England describe this bill as 'Kafka-esque socialist insanity'. We saw him say, in proving his point, that, under his analysis, 'You can't be an electrician in a coalmine.' That might be news to the people in the coalmines of Collie, where indeed they do have electricians doing very important work.

We saw the member for Petrie open his speech very appropriately: the first words to come out of the member for Petrie's mouth were, 'The coalition will oppose'. I'm going to say for those opposite that we know you're going to oppose. You don't need to tell us. That doesn't come as a surprise. But at least he was telling the truth when he said, 'The coalition will oppose'. But then he strayed a little bit from the truth. The member for Petrie said, 'Australia of course has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and the coalition has always supported it.' That might be news to thousands of workers in Holden, who might have a slightly different recollection of whether they got support from the coalition.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition returned to truth when she said—again, the first thing she said on this bill—'I rise to oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill.' Again, no surprise there. Then we had the criticisms from the member for Hinkler. He said the reason he can't support this bill is, 'We see nothing for uranium and nothing for nuclear.' Well, if he wants to talk about seeing nothing for uranium and nothing for nuclear, maybe he'd like to look first in his own party room, because we have still seen nothing on their nuclear costings, nothing on the precise locations.

The Leader of the National Party in Western Australia a couple of months ago was telling us they'd done all the geological surveys, for every one of the sites for the nuclear power plants, but won't release those geological surveys. I would have thought that if you respected communities and you were sitting on geological surveys about where you're going to place a nuclear reactor in their town then you would release those surveys. But no: we got criticism about having nothing for nuclear in our bill—and I agree; there is nothing for nuclear in this bill, and nor should there be. This is entirely about grabbing the opportunities of the future rather than the expensive ideas of the past.

The member for Groom went out and said that this bill is somehow communism. I'll tell you what this bill is about. It's about making more things here in Australia. That's just practical common sense, in my view. It's about making our nation a renewable energy superpower, grabbing those opportunities, and making our economy more resilient and more secure. Our economy has felt the pressures of international challenges, and we saw that during the COVID pandemic. Why wouldn't you want a more resilient and more secure economy?

We've proudly been doing that hard work of giving Australia that more resilient economy—our National Reconstruction Fund investing in manufacturing across our economy; the 500 fee-free TAFE places, building up the skills of our workforce; the investments we've made in our universities, in our science industry and in cyber capability; and the new jobs and expertise we are building up in our defence manufacturing program, which will be of particular benefit both to South Australia and to the wonderful state of Western Australia. And we have, for the first time in this country, a comprehensive plan for cleaner, cheaper energy for all Australians that can power advanced manufacturing and open up those opportunities of a net zero economy.

I think it's also really important to note that this bill is clearly about maximising private investment. You need only look at the explanatory memorandum to see that this bill is laser focused on getting more private investment from the global capital markets into Australian jobs. That should be welcomed by everyone in this place. It's about getting more investment into our economy so we can be a more productive economy, a more productive Australia and a more economically secure Australia.

One great example of that is the initiative for production tax credits. This initiative is something that pays on success. You get the tax credit only when you're producing these very essential critical minerals that we not only need but already have, right under our feet. As you walk through Western Australia, there are critical minerals in the ground. We can dig them up, refine them, turn them into advanced products and then sell those products. The private sector can make a hell of a lot of money out of that, and the Australian people can get fantastic jobs out of it, and we're going to incentivise that happening. There is no reduction in revenue where a company doesn't succeed. There is only support from the government where they are doing exactly what we and our international partners know Australia needs to be doing: supplying into global supply chains those critical minerals that are essential for so many industries and essential for the transformation to net zero.

I have a particular view, and I've expressed my support for this. But obviously there are a range of other views, particularly in the Liberal Party, about whether or not this will be something that they support. I want to reference something that Libby Mettam, the Leader of the Western Australian Liberal Party, said recently. I know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that you know Libby Mettam well. I think she's someone who's actually come to this debate looking at it in the national interest even though she's, obviously, seeking office in the Western Australian parliament. She said, 'We, the Liberal Party, will always stand up for Western Australia and we will support this measure.' I welcome that commonsense support from the Leader of the Liberal Party in Western Australia.

I understand, based on her own comments, that she is actively lobbying her federal colleagues, because she said: 'It's something that I will raise with my federal colleagues. We are committed to jobs and industry and new industries in Western Australia and that is my position.' Further, she talks to consistency, and we haven't seen that consistency from the Leader of the Opposition in this place. His consistency is just making sure he consistently says something different on the east coast to what he says when he comes to visit Western Australia. That, to him, is consistency. I note that Libby Mettam said, 'My commitment has been consistent in relation to this matter, and I’ll leave my comments there.'

This bill is also about making sure that we do look to build our future in a way that aligns our national security with our economic security, and we make no apologies for that. That's what the United States does, as does the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Canada. So many nations around the world are right now safeguarding themselves against whatever that next global shock is. It might be conflict, another pandemic, a cyber attack or another international energy crisis. Those countries choose to take action. Australia should choose to take action, and we can do so by passing this bill. We've got to work in economic reality. We've got to recognise that other advanced economies are investing in their industrial base. We've got to recognise that 97 per cent of Australia's trading partners are committed to net zero—97 per cent of our trading partners! We want to keep that trade going.

I not only want to keep that trade going; I want it to grow. I want to grab those opportunities. We also want to make sure that we don't just continue to extract and export our resources but also start doing what has been talked about by many sides of politics for many decades, where we don't just extract and we don't just export but we also start to add real value, because in adding value to our natural resources we create the highly skilled, high-paying jobs of the future. We can make things here. We can add value here. We can turn our resources that the world and global markets want into the products that the world wants, and make sure that, again, we secure the opportunities of not just the next generation but of generations to come.

Australia can do this and do it incredibly well because we have done this before and we have done it incredibly well. I know those opposite don't like it when we talk about the car industry—I don't know why—but look at what we did when the car manufacturing industry was created here in Australia during the Second World War under John Curtin, Australia's and Western Australia's wartime Prime Minister, and Ben Chifley. They looked to the future. They looked beyond the immediate. They looked to what Australia would need in order to be set up for decades of success. And we saw Curtin appoint Chifley as the minister for reconstruction in the middle of World War II. The Prime Minister who saved Australia during World War II knew that he didn't just need to ensure that we won peace but also to ensure that we had prosperity on the other side of that conflict. They looked forward, they planned, and we saw hundreds of thousands of Australians get good-quality jobs and be able to raise their families and build a future for themselves, all because of that work.

They also did the work that we seek to do—that is, to build a more diversified economy and a more decentralised economy, recognising that it was also our regions that were going to power this big transformation. It's our regions that are going to power a future made in Australia. What we see is that this will invest in our regions, securing Gladstone's future, a place that will be that global hub for clean energy and green industry. It will expand the wonderful medical manufacturing that we see in Victoria. In the upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia, we're making sure it is a producer of green iron, steel and cement, products that the world wants. Back in the Hunter Valley, it will mean new jobs, new technology and new manufacturing opportunities, making sure that workers across Western Australia—that one-third of the land mass—have critical minerals extracted, refined, exported and also turned into products.

I think we also know that you can choose in this place to be optimistic about Australia's future or to be negative about our present. You can't build the future with negativity. If you're scared of change, you can't make change. You can't create good, well-paying jobs if you're opposed to fair workplaces. I think that the Australian public have seen the negativity that comes from those opposite. There's no surprises that when each of them stand up to speak on this bill they start with the words 'I rise to oppose the bill'. No surprises there, because they spoke the same words when they rose to oppose the National Reconstruction Fund. They spoke the same words when they came in here to make all sorts of wild excuses as to why they opposed energy bill relief that is now showing up in households' energy bills. They want to end fee-free TAFE. They want to shut the door on 500,000 people who have had the opportunity to build up new skills, get new jobs and provide for their families. They have an unhealthy obsession with attacking the CSIRO. They liked to describe Australia as 'a manufacturing graveyard'. I think Australia is a great manufacturing nation, and under this bill we have a bright future as a manufacturing nation. I commend the bill to the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've just come out of the Olympics. Australia won 18 gold medals, 19 silver and 16 bronze—53 in total. It was an amazing performance and it filled Australians with great pride. It showed that our athletes and Australia are up with the best in the world in whatever they choose to do. The heroics of Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown in the pool, Jess Fox and her sister Noemie in the canoes, and Keegan Palmer and Arisa Trew on their skateboards, and the spectacular Nina Kennedy in the pole vault—all gold medallists, winning against the world's best, proving Aussies can do it against the world best, all competing on an equal footing. The same rules, the same tracks, the same pools and the same skate parks. It showed that Australia can more than hold its own.

But Ariarne and Kaylee were not required to wear a loose tracksuit while they were swimming. The Fox sisters had Kevlar canoes, not wooden canvas. Keegan and Arisa had state-of-the-art skateboards, not an old plank and a second-hand pair of rollerskates strapped on underneath. Nina did not use the inflexible aluminium pole in the pole vault that we used when I attended Kimba Area School, I must say. They all competed on an equal basis. Here today in Australia, our industries are competing against the world, just like our athletes, but they're not competing on an equal basis. It is a tilted field, and some of that tilt is provided by those that compete against us. That could mean tariff barriers, subsidies, use of slave labour or enforced labour, or, in fact, use of child labour. In many cases, there's not a lot we can do about that, except our best in international courts. But a lot of that tilt is here in Australia. It's a self-imposed tilt against Australian industries.

Australia is energy-rich, but our industries have some of the highest electricity prices in the world. We have some of the most restrictive work practices in the world, leading to some of the highest labour costs. Our gas prices are higher than they should be. Industries have to deal with: the safeguards mechanism; compliance costs ratcheting up higher every year, year on year; scope 3 emissions coming down the tunnel at them; the highest interest rates in a generation; inflation at a 20-year high and seemingly stuck there; new vehicle efficiency standards; new IR laws allowing employees to seek double their holiday allocations; pay for ever-increasing days of leave for an expanded number of reasons; despite the generous conditions, a skilled labour shortage; the compulsion to embed a union rep in a workplace at the employer's expense; and environmental activists who are increasingly aligning themselves with traditional owners to frustrate, delay and blow out the cost of new projects. I wonder why it is that business and investors are feeling under pressure here in Australia? Why don't we ask Kyle Chalmers to drag a wheelbarrow along behind him in the pool?

The government says, 'Don't worry.' The Future Made in Australia Bill tells us: 'Don't worry about it. We'll level the playing field with taxpayers' money, subsidies, grants and even $350 off a business's electricity.' I am sure that will make an enormous impact, he says with his tongue in his cheek. The problem with these bills is that they lack structure and any guidance on where the government is going to spend the money, so it becomes, as has been mentioned by my colleagues, a slush fund. The $1 billion for the solar panel manufacturing plant at the site of the closed Liddell power station at Muswellbrook is a prime example. It is intended to capture a share of the Australian and, perhaps, the world market when at this stage over 90 per cent of the world's solar panels are coming out of China. I wonder why? China has cheap shower, cheap labour, cheap money, no carbon taxes and is already producing 90 per cent of the world's supply.

Even more challenging for this new investment proposal in Australia is that China produces 97 per cent of the world's purpose-made silicon for the silicon wafers for PV solar. It's worth reflecting on that. Originally photovoltaic cells were made out of leftover bits of silicon from other processes. It was China that built these scale factories that have been able to drive the costs down. If Australia were to compete in this space, we would have to build scale factories of this size. We simply would not have the market. The Chinese panels are of world quality. You wouldn't want to kid yourself. If we are going to round the Chinese up at their own game, they are hardly a soft target. Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute said it was unclear what Australia's strategic was in solar manufacturing. He said, 'It's a bit of a bloodbath commercially.' He also said:

The growth was enormous. The prices came down dramatically and that wiped out a lot of the companies making panels. I don't think any of that has changed.

The question is this: it hasn't worked so far, so why would it be different this time?

It is a good question.

The Productivity Commission has said that this should be retrospectively tested against the national framework test. That's for good reason. This is exactly what I am talking about here. The government has chosen to back an industry without having a good understanding of how difficult that will be. They are playing to the opposition's strengths, if you like. I don't mean this opposition; I mean the business opposition. They could scarcely pick a more unlikely target: the product of the second-biggest economy in the world with few of the self-imposed handicaps that Australia excels in. All governments should be guided by reality, not excessive optimism.

If the government was intent on supporting Australia manufacturing in an agnostic manner and not on their pet project, it would pay for it to concentrate on industries where our chances of success are much higher, such as ensuring we have more gas in the market, carbon capture and storage, and blue hydrogen. But they are all excluded from this bill. Not excluded and much more likely to be a success would be fertilisers or chemical plants to provide independent sovereign capacity for our world-class agricultural system. A good place to start may be the group of companies led by Australian Plant Proteins which planned to build a pulse protein plant processing capacity in South Australia under the Modern Manufacturing Initiative and where they were awarded $113 million. There were going to be three facilities. The South Australian government was putting in $65 million, and industry was putting in $200 million.

Demand for plant based foods globally is booming, and you may well ask why we would build this in South Australia. It's because we already produce over 25 per cent of legumes in Australia and we have a very reliable climate in the lower north, mid-north and Yorke Peninsula. It was envisaged that we would be able to quadruple that amount, actually, and that is a highly rewarding task for farmers—to be growing in this pulse industry. My guess is that that is a much better proposal than the solar proposal.

Of great concern to me in this legislation is the raid on EFIC, the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, diverting its focus from driving exports to spreading the love locally. To put that in brackets, it's propping up the Labor vote in their electorates. Worth restating are the original objectives of the EFIC Act: to facilitate and encourage Australian export trade and overseas infrastructure development by providing finance, to encourage banks and other financial institutions to finance exports and overseas infrastructure development, to provide information and advice about finance to help support Australian export trade, to assist other Commonwealth entities and businesses in providing finance and financial services and to administer payments in relation to overseas aid.

This is just a raid on a convenient pile of money, on a convenient source, that will lessen the capacity of EFIC to meet its primary purpose. That alone should be enough to discourage people from supporting this legislation. The Labor Party has a track record in this area. The Howard government established a $2 billion communications fund. It was a future fund like the Future Fund and the medical future fund. It was to provide an ongoing income stream to invest and reinvest in regional telecommunications. It was established in 2005 to ensure people in rural, regional and remote Australia were not left behind. What happened to that? Kevin Rudd was on an aeroplane to Western Australia one day and trying to work out what to do with the internet. He came up with a $4 million plan on the back of a drink coaster that sucked up the $2 billion out of the regional telecommunications fund. It's just like EFIC. It's a pile of money there that the Labor Party can't keep their hands off—kleptomaniacs.

Across the board, Labor are clearly picking winners, preferencing their pet project—100 per cent renewable energy. We all support renewable energy. Everybody in this House would support renewable energy, and in South Australia it's very popular. In fact, there are 3,597 megawatts of installed capacity of renewable energy in South Australia, with 2,740 of that in my electorate of Grey. There are another 1,300 megawatts on roof tops. But, as I have explained to this House on a number of occasions, South Australia leads the nation in renewable energy, doubling that of the next mainland states. We also lead Australia in the electricity price race. We are 50 per cent higher in our retail than the next highest state in Australia. There's a complex underlying reason for this. It is not just the renewable energy at faceplate; it is the embedded subsidies that are in our bills, which people cannot see and which are hidden from their view, that are driving South Australia to this higher point.

The reason for me focusing on that, and what it shows is that, governments and all of us Australians need to be fully aware of the actual consequence of legislation, the actual end outcome. I read in the newspaper just recently someone lamenting about the fact that people are being asked to shut off their rooftop solar because there's too much supply at certain times of the day. They basically said, 'Well, who would have thought of that?' They could have read what I said in this place 10 years ago. I thought of it. I don't blame anyone for chasing the government subsidies—this is what they've been told to do—but I said that the concept of rooftop solar in the end is like trying to put water back in the Murray through your garden hose. The system is just not plumbed for it. And now we've reached this point of maximum saturation, and the tipping point there becomes the cost of the backup in the renewable system. It's like a parabola: the higher you go up the scale, the higher the impact costs become. It's the reason why we need to reach an understanding of the issues and the things that actually drive the markets before we make these investment decisions—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with Standing Order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be granted leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.