Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We simply cannot have businesses that are only producing a profit based off government grants. I'm not the only one who is saying this. Danielle Wood, the productivity commissioner—the government's key economic adviser appointed by Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers—has 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 also said: 'Your infants grow up, they turn into hungry teenagers and it's kind of hard to turn the tap off.'

I always like to ensure that Australians have another choice, a better choice. The choice is a Liberal-National government under the leadership of Peter Dutton and David Littleproud. We must get back to basics and we must develop policies—

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

Member for Dawson, you need to refer to members by their correct titles. You don't use the names; you use their titles.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker. Under the leadership of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, and Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud—

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

You don't need to use the names, Member for Dawson.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is it illegal for me to use the names?

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

They're current members in the House. You should not refer to them by their personal names. You need to use their titles.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We must get back to basics and we must develop policies that set up our nation for success for generations to come. We will build a nation that is backed by mining, manufacturing, agriculture, technology and innovation. We want to keep introducing taxes that we expect our farmers to pay. We won't be one eyed to power generation sources, and we won't back down on strong borders. We want Australia to be a place where homeownership is possible for every Australian. (Time expired)

Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was an interesting contribution from the member for Dawson. If only he had been part of a government, for nine years, that didn't want manufacturers to leave the country, didn't refer to manufacturing in Australia as a 'graveyard' and didn't make sure things were made offshore when they could have been made onshore. That is in contrast to what we want to do. The Albanese Labor government has a plan for a future made right here in Australia, and it's very simple. It says: 'We need to make more things in our own backyard. We want our communities to benefit from that hard work. We want people to reap the rewards of making those things here.'

Making more things in our country will help grow our economy. It will create good jobs, particularly in our rural and regional communities—jobs at home, because you shouldn't have to pack your bags to build a career. Australia has everything we need right here in this country to build our future, and Labor recognises that much of this is in our regions. We've got world-leading industries, world-class resources and some of the best innovators in the world. The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is all about seizing the opportunities that come with this. It is about securing our place in a global economic and strategic landscape that's quickly changing. One thing COVID reminded us was that we need to do things for ourselves. We need to build more things right at home, here.

After a decade of coalition neglect and deliberate underinvestment, the Albanese government isn't wasting a day. We're delivering the infrastructure, the skills, the jobs and the services that will boost liveability and ensure that our regional communities are strengthened. That's because Labor governments have a strong record of boosting local manufacturing and making our regions more productive. This is something we're building on with our $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia plan and through our investments in the 2024-25 budget. We're putting regional industries and economies at the centre of our plan by leveraging the competitive advantages outside of our big cities, from vast energy resources, advantages in new clean energy industries, an agricultural sector that is world leading, and innovation that we're committed to harnessing. Our record investments across the two budgets are making this potential a reality. We're stimulating regional economies and we're unlocking significant investment opportunities. This will forge a better future in our regions, supporting locally led organisations to grow and ensuring that people continue to develop new skills close to home.

As part of this, our $1.7 billion Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund will uplift priority sectors, many of which are based in our regions. We know Australia has significant potential to become one of the lowest-cost producers of green metals. Our iron, steel, alumina and aluminium sectors are already providing employment for 39,000 Australian. These sectors are supporting local construction, defence, transport and infrastructure projects, as well as our export markets. Having recently driven past BlueScope Steel at Port Kembla, to me it's clear how big this industry is and how it underpins local economies. Our investments are all about leveraging existing expertise and unlocking the forward capability we know is there. We will also invest $8 billion over the next decade to put Australia on a path to being a global player in hydrogen. This will forge a new skilled workforce in our regional communities and ensure we can take advantage of growing Indo-Pacific markets.

As the world progresses towards its net-zero commitments, we know there will be an increased demand on minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, from hydrogen to batteries and solar panels. We're already the world's largest producer of lithium, and we're ensuring that we continue to strengthen the resilience in our supply chains. This includes $7 billion towards our critical minerals production tax incentives, which is showing Australia and the world that we're serious about investing in value-adding production. That's on top of our $566.1 million investment to support Geoscience Australia to progressively map the whole of onshore Australia by 2060. Having a comprehensive picture of our critical minerals, alternative energy sources, groundwater and other resources will ensure that we can leverage the opportunities that come with a net-zero future.

Our $835.6 million investment to grow Australian solar manufacturing and our $549 million investment to boost domestic battery-manufacturing capabilities will have significant benefits for our regions. We know that Australians invented solar panels, yet we didn't commercialise the technology and keep it onshore. We want to make sure we don't make that mistake again. Under Labor, we're generating 25 per cent more renewable energy, and we've ticked off enough renewable energy projects to power three million homes. At Punchs Creek in the Toowoomba region, an 800-megawatt solar farm will support up to 340 direct jobs during construction and generate enough energy to power 300,000 homes. Projects like this will continue to roll out across our regions, because this is what happens when you throw away a colour coded spreadsheet and invest with purpose.

Our Future Made in Australia is all about building on all of the great work we're doing now and making sure companies have what they need to unlock a pipeline of new opportunities. As the member for Eden-Monaro, I only have to look around at my vast electorate to see firsthand what investing in Australian-made looks like—amazing examples of companies coming together, like the Bega Group coming together with a whole range of local agricultural suppliers to build a circular economy in our valley. Their great work will now see the national Centre for Circularity built in Bega, and many local producers and local companies are now taking advantage of what working with a conglomerate like Bega Cheese and the Bega Group is, along with Deloitte, KPMG and Rabobank. This is an innovative project. If anyone wants to have a look at it, check out Landline on ABC iview for the amazing vision of Barry Irvin, the chairman of Bega Cheese.

We are the sunniest, windiest continent on earth and should be world leaders on the next generation of renewable energy sources. In 2022, 32 per cent of Australia's total electricity generation was from renewable energy sources. We've got a bold agenda, net zero by 2050, which is why we're putting the planning behind us and not wasting a day. Regional Australia will benefit from this, with new jobs, new industries and new skills. But we need a government prepared to step up and also do its part, and that's why we're investing $22.7 billion in this bold and innovative plan—a plan that goes hand-in-hand with our record investments in regional skills and training, including fee-free TAFE. We want kids sitting at Bega High School or Tumut High School right now to know that there's a future for them right there in their back yard if that's what they choose, and we want to send the strongest possible message that we're a government committed to strengthening regional economies by making more things here.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've said time and time again in this place that I live in the best region in the best state in the best country in the world. I tell my constituents that every day.

Tasmanians are innovators and in the North West, the West Coast and King Island, it's full of them. It's that island ingenuity. We manufacture high quality, world-leading products in my electorate. We are the home of Elphinstone, Delta Hydraulics, Penguin Composites, Jayben, Direct Edge and many others, which are all playing a part in transforming our region into a manufacturing centre of excellence. So when this government speaks of a future made in Australia, I'm excited because in my mind I translate that into a future made in Tasmania for me and my electorate. I know there's an enormous opportunity for our state to continue to leverage off our natural advantages and our world-leading business owners.

But there's a vast difference between my vision for our future and the ongoing prosperity for the manufacturers and this bill. This is another typical Labor bill. It's about the silky smooth sales pitch rather than fixing the real barriers that are stifling our workplaces and stifling industry. Not surprisingly, it's a Labor bill that is centred around the notion that governments know best. It's interventionist. It has the Prime Minister and his team trying to be everything to everyone, having a bit each way. There's a tag for you.

It's a bill where there's an attempt to solve a raft of problems of their own making, but all they are doing is creating multiple problems in a misguided effort to find a solution. There's nothing more dangerous for business and our future than a government who think they know best. A government who refuse to listen to industry experts and leading economists who are all telling them that this bill is fundamentally flawed. Of course, we all want more things made in Australia. The global financial crisis, the epidemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions across the world have reminded us of our vulnerability.

But the world is changing rapidly, and in this readjustment Australia must secure its position. We must act to remain globally competitive in industries where we have a comparative advantage. We must be clear eyed about what the government's role and what industry's role are in achieving this. That's what's at the heart of this bill and that's what this debate is about.

What exactly is the Albanese government trying to achieve? It's trying to get the fundamentals of the economy right, as we would expect, and rightly so. For example, this government is trying to play a role in providing affordable and reliable energy. But ask yourself, have they kept their election commitment to businesses and industry to make energy cheaper under this government? Of course they haven't. The facts back this in. Local manufacturers are suffering under this government's energy crisis. Labor promised a reduction in energy costs for businesses but they've only seen and delivered an increase.

So what is this bill delivering? On the face of it, it appears to be a return to the interventionist and protectionist Labor of old. I've said more than once in this place that governments do not create wealth. It's our thriving business sector that creates wealth. When it comes to energy costs, my electorate is also an agricultural based electorate and energy plays a big part in that as we export products all over the world and our domestic market.

We forget sometimes in this place that energy plays a part and comes in different forms. It's not just energy that comes out of the power socket. Electricity is obviously the first thing we think of, but diesel and fuel are forms of energy, and fertiliser is a type of energy.

We import a lot of canola into Tasmania for our dairy industry. We are the epicentre of the dairy industry in the great state of Tasmania. There is a dairy in my electorate that milks 23,000 milking cows twice a day, so they import a lot of canola and a lot of protein into the state of Tasmania. Well, we measure that in metabolic energy units, or ME, so that is effectively energy. That plays a part. Obviously that energy is carted on ships and on trucks, and that uses diesel and fossil fuels to transport that product to market and to farm, so that is affected. Everywhere that touches, energy is involved in some form or another. SeaRoad, operating out of the Devonport port in my electorate, operates a 214-metre long vessel which transports containers and freight from the state of Tasmania to Melbourne. That vessel has a combination of a compression-ignition internal combustion engine and a diesel engine which has LNG injection on board to make that more effective and more friendly to the environment. So again energy is used. There are farmers in my electorate—and I know this from my own operation—that have used diesel pumps for their irrigation over the last couple of years because it's effectively cheaper than running it from electricity, and that's not good enough. So energy plays a big part.

It's government's responsibility to put into place the policy settings that are necessary to achieve the step away from this energy dependence and let businesses do what they know best. It's not government's job to pick winners. It's not government's job to invest taxpayer money or to prop up uncompetitive businesses in the hope that sometime in the future they might be able to hold their own on the international commodity market. This approach, government providing industry subsidies to business, has failed right around the world time and time again. But intervention and providing taxpayer subsidies in an attempt to make a company internationally competitive is Labor's approach to this bill, and Labor has been warned by industry and by leading economists that this approach will fail.

Let's take an example. Let's take Labor's push for local manufacturing of solar panels. Under this plan, we would pour taxpayers' money into businesses to get them up off the ground. We would hold their hand and prop them up for an unspecified time with taxpayers' money, but at some stage we have to let them go on the international commodity market, where they are competing with the likes of China. China produces currently more than 90 per cent of the global supply of solar panels. Anyone who thinks that's a small thing to ask—that any Aussie manufacturer is going to be able to compete with the economies of scale, the cheap labour and the Chinese government backed solar panels industry and come out on top—is delusional. And what next? When the industry fails, as it inevitably will do, do we go back to the government, cap in hand, and ask for some more money? What happens to the workers? What happens to the local communities? What happens to their suppliers? And, when it comes to households buying solar panels, do we de-incentivise imported solar panels and force consumers to buy Australian-made? How do we do that, and are we going to put a tariff on imported goods? Where does it stop? Where does the intervention stop?

Productivity Commission Chair Danielle Wood is just one of the many who are voicing concerns about the high risks associated with this proposal around this bill. She warns against investing in industries like solar panels that don't have a competitive advantage. She says:

It diverts resources, that's workers and capital, away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high value uses.

That's important because individual sectors within our economy don't work in isolation. If you give it to one, you're taking it from another. If you give a leg-up to one industry, you are stifling another. It is a finely tuned ecosystem, easily disrupted, and the greatest disruptor of all seems to be government. Ms Wood went on to say that this bill risks entrenching subsidy-dependent industries and would come at a cost to the Australian economy.

Unfortunately, this is a well-worn path for this government. This underperforming government is under pressure to deliver something in this term. Their popularity is waning, and they have no capacity to solve the challenges before them. So what do they do? They're going to cash-splash. It's a well-worn path taken by Labor MPs in a similar situation. We'll never forget the tragedy of the Rudd government's $2.8 billion home insulation scheme—a scheme that resulted in a royal commission where government was held to account for a policy that was made on the run and, as a result, was not properly designed or implemented. And then there were the rorts and the waste of the $3½ billion Building the Education Revolution fund. That's where this policy is heading. This government is running out of time, and in response it has put this bill forward trying to be all things to all people. It's policy on the run, and we all know that will end up down south.

This is what the Prime Minister has said about the Future Made in Australia Bill:

The Future Made in Australia plan is about attracting and enabling investment, making Australia a renewable energy superpower, value-adding to our resources and strengthening economic security, backing Australian ideas and investing in the people, communities and services that will drive our national success.

And yet, over the past two years, day after day, year after year, the Prime Minister and his government have stood by and done nothing as the rising cost of doing business is sending businesses to the wall. They're closing their doors.

This government is saying that it wants to pick winners while watching businesses that have thrived for decades go broke. They've been so focused on this unnecessary bill that they have actually turned their backs on the sector that they say that they are trying to support. It doesn't make sense. Energy costs, taxation, IR legislation, red tape, green tape, insurance, transport—the list goes on. Around 19,000 businesses have entered insolvency since Labor came to office—19,000. It's the highest on record since ASIC began collecting data. It's beyond belief that this government is talking about a future made in Australia when right now, today, at this minute, they're sending businesses to the wall. It doesn't make sense. This is a government whose ego is so big that it has stopped listening to communities and the business sector.

Our region is the engine room of our state's economy. When I was elected in 2019, I pledged to fight every day to ensure that we received our fair share, and the former government listened. During my first term, Braddon received the second-highest investment of any electorate in Australia. That's something I'll never shy away from. It's only right. It's right for my region and my businesses. We invested in key infrastructure projects. We backed our local manufacturers. We gave them business confidence. We gave them an over-the-horizon strategic vision. This investment continues to be rolled out, and it's building the infrastructure of the future. That's what we need. This, in turn, is supporting small businesses, who employ thousands of locals in my region. It's keeping money in our local communities, and it's keeping money in local families' pockets, and they spend it in local shops.

But under this Albanese government principle, this bill, the pipeline of projects has dried up. Labor has no strategic vision for our future. The best that they can come up with, this bill, is an on-the-run move to pit one industry against another. We'll throw a splash of environmental considerations in on that, which will only exacerbate the damage. This is a government that is desperately seeking solutions. The foundation is all based on the wrong priorities.

And this is what has resulted in this bad bill. It is a bill that will only insert government. It is a bill that will result in billions of dollars of waste when it comes to taxpayers' money. This is a bill that has failed to gain any support from mainstream economists and industry itself. Australians want and deserve better. Only the coalition understands our national strengths. We are looking to build a nation which is a mining and manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse and a leader in technology and innovation. As a consequence, I cannot support this bill.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government is determined to see Australia become a nation that makes more things here, a nation that creates jobs and opportunities for all and a nation that stands strong in the face of global economic challenges. It's what brings the members of this government to Canberra. It's what brings an illustrious intellect such as the member for Parramatta to the floor of this parliament to sit by my side as I attentively absorb his contribution. For too long we have seen industries and jobs leave our shores, weakening our economic base and leaving Australians vulnerable. The Albanese Labor government is committed to reversing that trend. We are investing in Australian manufacturing, technology and innovation, ensuring that our economy is resilient, diverse and future focused.

The Future Made in Australia plan is about building an economy that works for everyone. It's about making sure that every Australian has the opportunity to benefit from our collective growth and prosperity. We have the opportunity to build a nation that doesn't just survive but excels in a competitive global economy. For too long our economy has relied heavily on exporting raw materials and importing finished goods. This has left us vulnerable to global market fluctuations and has meant that many of the high-paying jobs associated with these industries have gone offshore. The Albanese Labor government is determined to turn this around. The Future Made in Australia plan is about reclaiming our position as a country that not only provides raw materials but also produces high-quality products. It's about strengthening our industrial base, supporting local businesses and ensuring that Australia is more self-reliant and economically secure in the future.

We're making targeted investments in areas where Australia has a natural advantage, whether it's in manufacturing, critical materials or technology sectors. We believe in building a diverse and robust economy that can withstand the challenges of tomorrow. This is a vision for a prosperous and independent Australia that makes more things here and creates opportunities all across our great nation. A resilient economy is one that is built on diversity, innovation and self-reliance. By expanding our industrial base and reducing our dependency on international supply chains, we're not only strengthening our economy but also safeguarding it against global uncertainties. The Future Made in Australia plan will see significant investment in industries such as advanced manufacturing and minerals processing. These are sectors that have the potential to create thousands of good, high-paying jobs and position Australia is a global leader in innovation and production.

For our national interest framework, we're aligning economic incentives with the national interest. This ensures that the benefits of public investments flow back into communities, creating local jobs and opportunities. We're not just talking about creating jobs; we're talking about creating secure, well-paid jobs that offer skills development and stability for Australian workers.

Australia was once known for its strong manufacturing sector, but, over the years, we've seen a decline as production moved offshore. It's time now to reverse this trend. The Future Made in Australia plan is focused on bringing manufacturing back to our shores, creating jobs, boosting innovation and supporting Australian businesses. Our vision includes making Australia a leader in advanced manufacturing where we can produce the high-tech goods that the entire world's economy is demanding. Whether it's in electronics, medical devices or machinery, Australian manufacturers have the skills and expertise to compete globally. We're providing the support they need to grow and thrive, from access to capital and cutting-edge research to workforce development and infrastructure investment. By investing in our manufacturing capabilities, we're ensuring that Australia can produce the goods we need domestically, reducing reliance on imports and creating a stronger, more self-sufficient economy. This is about making sure that Australians benefit from the jobs and economic growth that come from a revitalised manufacturing sector.

A future made in Australia requires a workforce that is ready for the challenges of tomorrow. That's why we're investing in skills and training programs that will equip Australians with the knowledge and expertise they need to thrive in a changing economy. From advanced manufacturing to new technologies, the jobs of the future will require new skills. We're working with educational institutions, industry and unions to ensure that our training programs are aligned with the needs of our economy. This is about giving Australians the tools they need to succeed and ensuring that no-one is left behind as our economy evolves.

We're also focused on making education and training more accessible. By investing in local training facilities and programs, we're ensuring that all Australians have the opportunity to develop the skills they need, no matter where they live. This is how we will build a more inclusive and equitable economy—one that benefits all Australians.

At the heart of the Future Made in Australia plan is a commitment to our people. We understand that a thriving economy must be one that benefits everyone, not just the select few. That's why our plan is focused on creating opportunities for every Australian, no matter where they live or what their background might be. This means investing in local communities all across our country, ensuring that they have the infrastructure, the skills training and the support that is needed to participate in and benefit from our nation's growth. It means supporting local businesses and ensuring that they can access the markets and opportunities that they need to succeed. It means making sure that the jobs we create are secure, are well-paid and offer real career development opportunities.

Our commitment to communities also extends to ensuring that the economic benefits of this plan are shared fairly. We've established community benefit principles that guide our investments, ensuring that they create strong returns for local communities, local workers and local businesses. We're promoting safe and secure jobs, developing skilled and inclusive workforces, and engaging positively with local communities for gross economic benefit.

Australia is home to some of the brightest minds in the world. I'm sure the member for Parramatta would agree. Yet too often we've seen our innovations commercialised overseas because of a lack of support at home. The Future Made in Australia plan changes that by fostering innovation and ensuring that Australian ideas are turned into Australian jobs and products.

We're investing in research and development, supporting start-ups and encouraging collaboration between businesses and government. By doing so, we're creating an ecosystem that nurtures innovation and turns great ideas into commercial successes. Whether it's in technology, health care or manufacturing, Australia has the potential to lead the world in innovation, and we're providing the support needed to make that happen.

Our focus on innovation isn't just about new products. It's about improving productivity, increasing competitiveness and ensuring that Australian businesses can succeed on the global stage. This is how we will build a more prosperous future for all Australians.

In an increasingly interconnected world, Australia must ensure its place as a leader in the global economy. The Future Made in Australia plan is designed to do just that, by focusing on sectors where we can compete and win on the world stage. We're not just investing in industries of the future. We're also strengthening our trade relationships and ensuring that Australian businesses have the support they need to access international markets. By building strong supply chains and enhancing export capabilities, we're ensuring that Australian-made products are sought after all around the world.

This isn't just about boosting exports. It's about ensuring that Australia is a country that adds value, creates high-quality products and is competitive in the global marketplace. We're providing the tools and support that Australian businesses need and, in doing so, we're creating the jobs and the economic opportunities that our communities need right here at home.

The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 supports Australia's path to net zero. But, more than that, it will help to realise our potential to become a renewable energy superpower, securing Australia's place in a changing global landscape. This bill is about combining the might of Australian industry, energy, resources, skills and investment to build a stronger, more diversified and resilient economy, and a better future for all Australians.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Australia's response to the Inflation Reduction Act, introduced in the USA in August 2022, the Future Made in Australia legislation, or the FMIA, presents us with an important opportunity to decarbonise our economy and boost economic growth by reinvigorating our manufacturing sector and fostering innovation. Importantly, by encouraging and facilitating private sector investment to power the net-zero transition, the FMIA could help build a more diversified, resilient and future focused economy.

That ambition could not be more aligned with my community's aspirations, with many across North Sydney already pursuing increased productivity and output via innovation and investment, because my community recognises the world is changing and it wants Australia to be part of that change. Along with many others, my community has been frustrated that the nation has not made the most of its comparative advantages and has failed to leverage its workforce, abundant renewable resources and land. Ultimately, they recognise that the FMIA provides us with an opportunity to increase the sophistication and complexity of our economy whilst working to meet our climate targets as we move away from our history as a nation reliant on trade built on everything we can grow, dig and ship.

Done well, the FMIA opens the door to a future in which Australia is no longer reliant on fossil fuels but is rather a global exporter of renewable energy; a nation where high-energy goods are manufactured using renewable energy and exported as zero-carbon products and where renewable energy components like batteries, innovative new solar panels and wind turbines are made and exported right here; a nation that is recognised for our capacity to export renewable energy electrons to neighbouring countries like Singapore whilst domestically we use our own 100 per cent certified renewable energy sources to make green hydrogen and ammonia; and, finally, a nation where other related exports like engineering expertise and software services thrive and grow—a nation we'd all wish to live in.

To achieve emissions reduction at the pace and scale needed, however, we must make every decision from here on out by looking at it through a whole-of-economy lens, ensuring our actions are clearly directed and coordinated. While the headlines around the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 were initially encouraging, the devil is shown to be in the detail, and it is crucial that we examine whether the FMIA will be strong enough to overcome the challenges we face whilst enabling us to embrace the opportunities.

Seen by many as a visionary step towards revitalising our domestic industries and fortifying our economy, the legislation does indeed hold promise. However, having discussed it broadly with my community, I have found several areas where we believe it could be strengthened. They include the following. At its core, the FMIA legislation is designed to promote local manufacturing and innovation, aiming to ensure Australian businesses and industries are competitive on a global scale. While the legislation is intended to encourage the transition to renewable energy, support local enterprises, encourage investment in advanced technologies and net-zero industries, and secure jobs for Australians, the reality is that it may fall short if it fails to clearly articulate an overarching and single-minded mission. Having scattergun goals spread across multiple areas is a surefire way to achieve little, and many in my community would like to see this mission oriented economic policy tightened.

One of the most significant criticisms of the FMIA legislation is its lack of emphasis on long-term decarbonisation. While the legislation addresses the immediate needs and supports of short-term goals, it fails to outline a comprehensive long-term vision, and ultimately many are left asking the question: what mission is this legislation seeking to achieve? Throughout history, extraordinary things have been done when the mission has been clear, whether that was mobilising economies during the world wars or the efforts to get a human on the moon. The governments involved at those times were unequivocal about what they were seeking to do. In this context, my community would like to see the mission for the FMIA legislation more clearly articulated, and we would like to see that mission become known as 'to be decarbonising Australia's economy'. As it stands, fossil fuel companies and projects are not explicitly excluded from funding under the FMIA, and there is no clear link to decarbonisation goals or climate considerations. Rather, Australia's emissions reduction targets and obligations under the Paris Agreement are not included in the legislative objects, meaning the overarching goal for the scheme is not in line with our need to urgently decarbonise.

To rectify this, the FMIA Bill should explicitly rule out any assistance for fossil fuel projects or investments, including carbon capture and storage projects, as many of these projects, particularly the carbon capture and storage ones, currently have a poor track record and present material risks for Australia's transition to net-zero emissions. To this end, I'll be supporting crossbench amendments, recommended by many stakeholders, that would enable that exclusion.

Secondly, the FMIA legislation includes provisions for oversight, but these mechanisms are not particularly rigorous. Without stringent enforcement, the potential for misuse or ineffective limitation remains high. In facilitating investment it's paramount that the government avoids a situation, whether it is real or perceived, where taxpayer money is used to fund pet projects. Investment decisions must be transparent and driven by independent expert economic analysis and there must be clear and compelling public value when resources are diverted from one industry to another. Financial support must be tied to clear policy goals, not distributed on the whim of politicians or governments. To ensure the effective use of public money, taxpayer funds should be allocated only where that assistance is needed in a transition phase as ultimately it is imperative that industries supported can stand on their own two feet after receiving an initial leg-up from the government. The government must avoid propping up industries that are not economic or are unlikely to become so. As the Productivity Commission has warned:

If poorly designed, industry policy such as the FMIA can be costly for governments, act as a form of trade protection, and distort the allocation of Australia's scarce resources towards activities that Australia is not best placed to undertake.

To ensure the judicious use of taxpayer dollars, then, there must be a sustainable and future focused policy agenda that allows businesses to plan confidently. Those I have spoken to have clearly stated they would like to see the FMIA investment linked to the National Interest Framework, with the basic requirement being for all funded projects and entities to be within the scope of a sector assessment. As it currently stands, however, this is not the case. The Productivity Commission has recommended limiting FMIA support to sectors that pass the National Interest Framework sector assessments. Again, I will support amendments moved by my crossbench colleagues that would implement that recommendation. Overall, the National Interest Framework is absolutely welcomed, as it is seen as an appropriate way to assess sectorial intervention, but, by tying investors to it, the FMIA funding will be targeted towards our national policies, which in turn will ensure an effective of use of public money and that resources are only diverted from industries where there is a clear and strong public upside.

The Productivity Commission has also noted the importance of using clear and robust policy frameworks to inform interventions and to ensure compelling value for money and the delivery of industry assistance. Whether public funding is put to its best use will rest on the strengths of the sector assessment process. However, it is currently unclear to what extent initiatives already announced as part of the FMIA plan, such as the Solar Sunshot program and the Battery Breakthrough Initiative, were subjected to this sort of sector assessment prior to announcement. To boost public confidence in these projects and the overall operation of the bill, the government should provide clarity as to whether these projects will be subjected to the same rigorous and transparent sector assessments as future projects will.

Thirdly, the community benefit principles contained in this legislation are an important and welcome inclusion as they ensure the public-private investment the FMIA attracts will flow to communities in ways that benefit local workers and businesses. The bill requires decision-makers of the FMIA's support to have regard to these community benefit principles to ensure the benefits of these programs are widely shared. However, stakeholders have raised numerous questions about the principles and there is clearly a lack of clarity, leaving it open to the interpretation of what constitutes a benefit to a community and how it can be measured. It also leaves the door open to future regulations redefining and repurposing the community benefit provisions of the bill.

The Climate Capital Forum have raised questions regarding theses benefits, including how the benefits will be measured and what their success would look like, how equity is measured and even whether the environmental benefits are more valuable than a program that enhances skilled employment. To address these questions, the government should clarify how the community benefit principles will apply in practice, how companies will be held responsible for following them and how communities will be able to hold companies and projects to account. This may be achieved by including a requirement that, where the secretary undertakes public consultation, members of the public are afforded a reasonable opportunity to provide comment directly to the secretary, who must then include an explanation of how public comments were considered in the final report.

Finally, on top of everything previously outlined, the current legislation does not adequately address the need for collaboration with Indigenous communities. Indigenous Australians have a unique role in the nation's cultural and economic landscape. Their involvement in future manufacturing and innovation initiatives is not just a matter of social justice; it's also a strategic advantage. Given this, I believe this legislation should include specific programs to support Indigenous businesses and entrepreneurs, ensuring First Nations perspectives are integrated into decision-making processes related to manufacturing and innovation. Including a standalone First Nations benefit-sharing principle that recognises the need for First Nations communities and traditional owners to participate in and benefit from the FMIA initiatives would strengthen this bill. Furthermore, by providing funding for initiatives that promote Indigenous participation in technology and advanced industries, this initiative could truly help shape the way in which First Nations communities currently participate in the wider economy.

In closing, while the FMIA legislation presents a positive step forward for our manufacturing and innovation sectors on the pathway to decarbonisation, it is not without its flaws. To truly secure a prosperous future for Australia, we need to address the gaps and the weaknesses that have been identified through collaboration and consultation. By strengthening the focus of this legislation, by creating a clear link between the National Interest Framework and the FMIA funding, by requiring projects and entities to be within the scope of a sector assessment to be eligible for support, by explicitly ruling out the use of FMIA on fossil fuel and carbon capture and storage projects, by tightening up the community benefit principles to safeguard them against future governments, and by including a standalone community benefit principle for First Nations participation and engagement, this bill would be greatly strengthened.

It is our collective responsibility to advocate for legislation that meets the needs of today while preparing for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. I look forward to further debate around this bill.

Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Gilmore on the New South Wales south coast is an absolutely beautiful place to live. With pristine beaches and bushland and friendly, creative communities, it's the perfect place to raise a family or to retire. It's world famous for its white sands and towering forests. But the south coast is so much more than a tourist destination; it's also a great place to make things.

Internationally recognised businesses like Air Affairs Australia, now known as QinetiQ, and Alkath's Global Defence Solutions are manufacturing things locally to support the Navy's only air station, HMAS Albatross, at Nowra as well as defence more broadly. The Albatross Aviation Technology Park, just outside of HMAS Albatross, was designed specifically for defence industry to support defence and aviation industries, boosting defence support and advanced manufacturing industries, and creating and supporting local jobs.

In Gilmore we also have innovative local businesses building boats, making construction materials, producing chemicals, and manufacturing food and pharmaceuticals. Bomaderry is home to Manildra's Shoalhaven Starches, which is the largest private employer in the Shoalhaven. Shoalhaven Starches is the largest wheat starch and gluten plant of its kind in the world and operates in conjunction with a world-first ethanol distillery to extract value-added products from 100 per cent of the wheat grain by using the most advanced industry technology available. But, like most businesses of this size, Shoalhaven Starches is always looking to the future to reduce emissions and reduce energy consumption to remain profitable. That's where a Future Made in Australia can help with developing technologies to reduce emissions so we can make more things here in Australia and in our region.

I'm also pleased to say that we have inspiring community organisations like SHASA, the South Coast Health and Sustainability Alliance in the Eurobodalla, that are championing renewable energy, sustainability and resilience projects in the region. Whether it's encouraging people to take up EVs through their EV expo or creating bushfire havens with renewable energy, including solar and batteries, SHASA members understand the importance and opportunities for individuals, community organisations and businesses in reducing emissions.

The possibilities in my electorate for small businesses, renewable energy solutions and defence partnerships are endless, and this government's Future Made in Australia Bill will ensure that we can take advantage of these opportunities in Gilmore and right across Australia. This government's Future Made in Australia plan is a no-brainer. Its goal is to make more things here in Australia, to create jobs and to ensure that our economy becomes more resilient and secure into the future. It's a long-term vision to grow our nation into a renewable energy superpower and to encourage companies to invest in new projects and create new jobs, particularly in regional areas like my electorate of Gilmore. People living in Gilmore often have to leave the area for work, and those setting up new and innovative businesses often struggle to keep up with their counterparts in the city. The Future Made in Australia plan will make the most of our natural resources and will give people in regional communities across our nation a chance to seize economic opportunities closer to home. Making more in Gilmore—that's actually a great slogan—will mean our innovators, our researchers, our engineers and our manufactures can work close to home. They can raise their families on our beautiful coast and enjoy the beaches and the bush. They can have the best of both worlds. Investing in a future made in Australia will bring a new generation of secure, well-paid jobs to our regions and towns alike.

This government's plan is to build economic security for the long term by investing in the next generation of jobs and opportunities, to deliver reform that holds no-one back, and to drive progress, leaving no-one behind, no matter where they live. A shining example of one enterprise that has proven that things made in Australia—in Gilmore—are world-class is Air Affairs Australia—now known as QinetiQ—an advanced manufacturing centre and aerospace training services facility at South Nowra. The Shoalhaven has a significant Defence industry, and Air Affairs is a world-leading specialist in manufacturing and training with a focus on navy. Air Affairs products are in demand globally, and prior to COVID exports made up 70 per cent of its business. I'm told that this is because much of the equipment that Australian Defence Force sourced was imported. When COVID hit, those supply chains were interrupted or destroyed. We didn't have much of the critical equipment needed so, in an impressive pivot, Air Affairs was there as a recognised and proven defence industry manufacturer, and now 90 per cent of its products are sold domestically.

Air Affairs is the perfect example of a local, clean manufacturing facility that is making things in Australia. It is creating local jobs and apprenticeships, and providing navy aviation technician training to supply our local Navy base—what could be better? Air Affairs has apprentices at every level across all trades: manufacturing, processing, electrical and painting, mostly with graduates from local schools. They provide a one-stop shop for Defence products, using automation to complement their workers, including with 3D printers and some of the most complex machinery you've ever seen, overseen by mechanical engineers. We need more of this. We need more local jobs, more local training, more homegrown products. We need a future made in Australia and the opportunities it brings. Another Nowra-based business, Alkath's Global Defence Solutions, is a family owned company that has been building and supplying mobile field shelters for the ADF for more than 20 years. These deployable shelters are used as hospitals, kitchens, operations centres and accommodation, but the best part is that the team at GDS live and work in Nowra and support the Shoalhaven community. These two local companies are creating job opportunities, training local people and making things—all on the South Coast. That's exactly what this government's vision for a future made in Australia is all about.

Making our future here in Australia depends on workers, their skills and education, on research and on infrastructure, which is why we're building on the work we've already done. We're expanding the skills of our workforce with fee-free TAFE places, we're investing in our universities' science and cyber capabilities, and our comprehensive plan for cleaner, cheaper energy for all Australians will drive advanced manufacturing and open up opportunities across the country. This important legislation will facilitate private investment in job creation in industries of the future in order to benefit our economy. This government's Future Made in Australia plan is about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero, and securing Australia's place in a changing global, economic and strategic landscape. It will help Australia build a stronger, more diversified and resilient economy powered by renewable energy. It will create more secure, well-paid jobs and encourage and facilitate the private-sector investment required to make Australia an indispensable part of the global net zero economy.

The Future Made in Australia Bill recognises our future growth prospects lie at the intersection of our industrial resources, skills and energy bases, and our attractiveness as an investment destination. It combines our comparative advantage in renewable energy with traditional strengths in resources and manufacturing to build new opportunities, including in critical-minerals processing, green metals, clean energy technologies and low-carbon liquid fuels. The world needs Australia's resources. We can make things here and turn our resources into products that the world wants.

Our Future Made in Australia vision will put the talents of our people and our incredible natural resources to work making things here so we are not shipping things overseas and importing them back as finished products. We know this is possible because it's already happening. Companies are using Australian minerals to manufacture solar panels to put on our roofs. Researchers are making breakthroughs in science that will lead to new medicines. Under Labor we're generating 25 per cent more renewable energy, and we've ticked off enough renewable projects to power three million homes. Our Future Made in Australia plan is about giving an adrenaline boost to projects like these and making sure they have what they need to compete in the future.

Right now the world is Australia's oyster, so let's make the most of that. Our world-class renewable energy resources make Australia well placed to produce green hydrogen at internationally competitive prices. Significant quantities of green iron, steel, alumina and aluminium will be required to support the energy transition globally and domestically. Both steel and aluminium are used in wind turbines, electric vehicles and grid infrastructure. However, traditional metals production is highly carbon intensive. Australia can develop a long-term comparative advantage in green metals by drawing on our abundant metal and renewable energy resources. These are the resources that will drive our economy and the global economy in the 21st century.

Australia's potential to produce abundant renewable energy gives us a powerful advantage. We have the resources, we have the space and we have the opportunity to create a future made in Australia and to take advantage of the world's desire to transition to net zero. As the sunniest, windiest continent on earth, this is our moment. More than anywhere on earth, Australia is poised to gain new jobs, new industries and new skills. That's why we're investing in our people now.

This government is investing $91 million over the next five years to accelerate the development of the clean energy workforce through expanded access to the New Energy Apprenticeship Program and investments in VET clean energy courses. We're expanding support for women training in male-dominated industries through $55.6 million for the Building Women's Careers Program and $38.2 million to support diversity in science, technology, engineering and maths. This is part of this government's targeted approach to meeting the skills needed for a future made in Australia, including $68.4 million to attract and retain the skilled industrial workforce needed to support defence industrial priorities. This is a smart plan to build an economy where manufacturing will become every bit as strong as mining. But we can't be left behind by the rest of the world. We need to start now. We must look forward and plan for Australia's future and invest in it today.

It's important to note that this bill is not about government replacing private investment. It's about government being a catalyst for investment and unlocking the private capital to build new projects, create new jobs and drive growth and prosperity. This government wants a more diversified economy and a more decentralised economy where workers and communities in every part of the country can share in the opportunities that lie before us. We need to open the doors to new opportunities right now. We need to plan for a future made in Australia right now. We don't have time to waste. This bill is at the heart of our government's vision for a stronger, more prosperous and more resilient Australian economy. This bill speaks to our unwavering determination to shape the future of Australia, not wait for the future to shape us. It's time to make the most of what we have and make more things here. It's time to make Australia wealthier. It's time to make Australia more secure, and it's time to make Australia more independent. That's what a Future Made in Australia is all about. It's an economic plan for a better future for all Australians.

Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we're contemplating the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. It's a great tagline. Well done. As usual, Labor policy is guided by what can fit on a corflute at a polling booth. I can see the corflutes at the next election now: 'Labor supports a future made in Australia', perhaps with some subtle green and gold colouring to give that patriotic feeling to voters as they walk into the polling booth. This has no doubt been tested by focus groups. The government and everyone love things that are made here. We all have a sense of national pride and we want our country to be self-reliant and able to make stuff. What will the next Hills hoist or the next Victa lawnmower be? Will this bill reveal the next one of those things? I say it won't.

What we all agree on is that we want Australia to be a successful and competitive manufacturing nation. What we disagree on with the other side is how to make that happen and why on earth Labor would want to be a one-trick pony when Australian manufacturing could be so much more. I rise today to add my voice to the chorus of opposition to this disastrous and desperate proposal. What the corflutes won't say is that the Future Made in Australia isn't what Labor is making it out to be. Make no mistake: this is an ideological pursuit for the Labor Party. The coalition will oppose this bill because the more we hear about this plan the more we know it doesn't have any merit. What this plan actually is is a plan for pork-barrelling and more green energy financing, not the making of a strong, diversified and sustainable economy. This is a plan for more government intervention and handouts with strings attached, not genuine business investment.

Australia has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and the coalition has always supported it, despite what those on the other side say. But that support requires strong economic management that gets Australia back on track. We've got to get the basics right: affordable and reliable energy, flexible workplaces, less regulation and a reliable tax system that incentivises and rewards investment. Labor's policies on energy, industrial relations and tax are all making Australia a less attractive place to do business. The benefits to enterprise from a government handout are more than outweighed by the antibusiness settings which have been introduced by the Albanese Labor government.

This bill is literally all spin and no substance. The facts are clear: insolvencies in Australia are at record highs, productivity is down and businesses are struggling to just keep their doors open. Labor's plan for a future made in Australia has more spin than a Shane Warne leg break. As the shadow Treasurer has said, this is a political slogan in search of a policy. Economist after economist has criticised this policy. We're hearing more stories about the dodgy processes, the lack of economic scrutiny and the double standards that will apply to this program. Government can't solve the cost-of-living crisis by throwing billions of hard-earned taxpayer money around, and it most certainly can't solve the inflation spiral by doing the same. The Prime Minister might want to pick winners, but Australian families will continue to lose from Labor's reckless spending.

This bill is actually a demonstration of Labor's wrong priorities. After watching the government spend the whole of 2023 promoting its divisive and flawed $500 million Voice proposal rather than focusing on cost-of-living relief, Australians were hopeful that 2024 might be the year when the Prime Minister focuses on taming inflation and getting prices down. Instead, the Prime Minister revealed a plan to spend even more money and make productivity worse, a plan that has failed to gain support from mainstream economists. Labor has given plenty of handouts to lobbyists and overseas corporations, many of whom have ways other than government handouts to raise finance, but Labor has no plan for struggling families and small businesses.

Australia is in a full-blown cost-of-living and cost-of-doing-business crisis. Member after member on the other side of the chamber is blindly sleepwalking towards a model of selectively supporting manufacturing that will only guarantee one outcome: the continued manufacturing of high inflation. Australia is at the back of the pack when it comes to fighting inflation compared to our peer nations. We are the only G10 nation where core inflation has gone up compared to December. We are in an entrenched GDP per capita recession, with anaemic growth, which means households are going backwards. Around 19,000 businesses have entered insolvency since Labor came to office. For seats like mine in cities like the Gold Coast, that hurts families.

That is the highest on record since ASIC began collecting that data. Since Labor came to office, prices have gone up by 10 per cent, personal income taxes have gone up by 20 per cent, real wages have collapsed by nine per cent, household savings have gone down by 10 per cent and the family that has a typical $750,000 mortgage is around $35,000 worth off each year. This bill does nothing to alleviate these pressures on struggling families and businesses. This big-spending $4 billion cash splash is only going to make inflation worse. Households are going to great lengths to keep their heads above water, working more hours and taking on extra jobs. They're digging deep into their savings and making a lot of sacrifices to try to balance their household budgets, all because the Prime Minister and Treasurer can't show restraint in their spending.

Just like households, governments need to manage their budgets and live within their means, but the Albanese Labor government has shown weak economic leadership once more. With this policy, the government is taking from household budgets to bolster the balance sheet of hand-picked projects and companies that support their political agenda. That is not responsible economic management.

We know a lot about what the bill doesn't do, but what does this legislation try to achieve? 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. Let me tell you: the National Interest Framework will be conveniently interpreted as a political interest framework very quickly. 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 pure R&D and demonstration to allow it to support manufacturing, deployment and commercialisation. These changes to ARENA are really just a slush fund for one minister. This legislation fundamentally changes the purpose, duties and roles of ARENA, but they won't be putting that on a corflute. No, they'll skip the part about how the Future Made Australia is a secret vehicle to drive their renewables-only energy agenda. This is not just a tagline; it's a Trojan Horse to sneak past Australians that this government is absolutely obsessed with delivering expensive renewables.

ARENA has always been a research and development agency. This is clear in its remit, the explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech. Labor in opposition opposed even expanding that remit to cover sensible net zero related R&D expenditure, including into carbon capture and storage and into blue hydrogen. How times have changed. Now they're expanding that remit even further, into deployment and manufacturing, and why? It is because it suits their interests and that of their donors. If ARENA is being given the remit to cover deployment, why does the Clean Energy Finance Corporation even need to exist?

But Labor's changes are more insidious than they have led the public to believe. This is because the bill gives the Minister for Climate Change and Energy the ability to boost its funding at the stroke of a pen. No parliamentary oversight, no scrutiny or accountability—just ministerial discretion to splash taxpayer money wherever the minister chooses. It is a delegated piece of legislation with which the government can roll out up to $4 billion to support their ideologically aligned corporations and projects in an election year. This is a slush fund plain and simple.

Australian taxpayers are already on the hook for Labor's inflation, and it will get worse. Labor has spent $315 billion in new spending since the election. That's over $30,000 per Australian household. I can tell you that, in my electorate and all around Australia, Australians do not feel like they are reaping the benefits of an extra $30,000 worth of spending on them. This has fuelled inflation. It's eating into living standards. It's expenditure where Australians ultimately foot the bill. They're not seeing a direct benefit themselves. Australian families are paying the price for Labor's mismanagement, with 12 interest rate hikes, some of the most stubborn core inflation in the developed world and the higher taxes that come with it. Australian families shouldn't be paying for Labor's billion-dollar renewables re-election strategy.

Another problem with this legislation is that it puts the Treasurer and his department in the position to decide whether a sector of the Australian economy deserves investment. The Treasurer has never run a business and described his private-sector career as six long, long months, and he will now be setting the conditions for businesses to operate and seek funding under this plan. The analysis to green-light these investments will be guided by a Treasurer who has hardly worked in business and a department of bureaucrats who under this government have made a reputation for failing to understand business. This is not the way to build a healthy and productive economy.

The Business Council have warned that these procurement rules are at risk of enabling this behaviour, while it risks subsidising businesses Australia would never have a comparative advantage in. The Business Council of Australia rightfully points out that this is important because there are taxpayer dollars at stake, but the BCA have also been clear that this is not the best path ahead. The best path is to get back to basics and get the fundamentals right. BCA President Bran Black has said:

Our competitors … 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.

The Productivity Commission says that a $1 billion commitment to make more solar panels in Australia under Labor's Future Made in Australia program should be retrospectively subjected to a tougher national interest framework. Allowing sectors to bypass the National Interest Framework process would undermine its role in disciplining spending, yet Labor is already breaking their own rules when it suits them. We are not surprised.

Key elements of Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda include the controversial PsiQuantum contract, which, of course, bypassed the National Interest Framework and sector assessments. There are serious questions to answer about the decision to make this investment, with it increasingly clear that Minister Husic 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 their subsequent analysis has said that it is not a sound investment. The Productivity Commission were not consulted on the details of the proposed investment prior to their announcement, and we are already seeing that the policy is not effective. But the coalition is not the only one raising these serious concerns with Labor's plan. There is commentator after commentator jumping on board to point out the flaws in Labor's approach.

Australians want and deserve something better than a government playing politics with their money in pursuit of re-election. The coalition is working to ensure Australia can play to its strengths. We are looking to build a nation which is a mining, manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse and a leader in technology and innovation. (Time expired)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always happy to rise to speak on bills such as the so-called Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. I like to look at all of the bills that come through the House through a specific lens for areas in regional and rural Australia like my electorate of Cowper and the businesses and manufacturers in my electorate of Cowper. Unfortunately, as with so many bills brought into this House, the name of this bill is misleading and overly simplistic. It would have been more honest to have called this the 'Renewables Made in Australia to the Detriment of the Majority of Other Manufacturers Bill'. That would have been more apt and more simplistic. The name of the bill effectively implies that it will assist the lion share of our local manufacturers, both small and medium enterprises, in regional and rural Australia. It is just a fallacy. It's just not true. In my electorate, it is these businesses that support our local economies, that employ our population and that produce innovative and locally sourced products across a wide range of industries, from furniture to food, clothing and energy-efficient light bulbs, for example. These businesses that produce these products are so proud to do so and stand tall.

Under this intended bill, we will continue to see these small and medium businesses being crushed under the burden of rising production costs and cumbersome industrial relations challenges. These businesses are desperately balancing and rebalancing their books to keep the lights on and the doors open. I was in Macksville on the weekend. I went to the local coffee shop there. It's just a small coffee shop. The owner there told me how her electricity bill has gone up from $4,000 to $6,000 a quarter to run a small fridge, a copy machine and some lights. She told me about the butcher around the corner whose refrigeration bill has gone from $6,000 to $10,000 a quarter. We are talking about a small butcher's. He hasn't increased his costs. He's got to absorb that.

Manufacturers would have thought, reading the title of this bill: 'Thank goodness. The government actually has recognised our struggles and is actively creating avenues for us to keep up with market forces.' Well, I am sorry. You might as well switch off now, because there is nothing like that in there for you in the regions. I would like to think that in this place we would like to see more products designed and manufactured in Australia both for our own population and for the export market. I would also like to believe in this place we would like to protect our nation's sovereignty and that everyone would like to see ongoing solutions to weaknesses in our supply chains that were laid bare during the pandemic. I do believe that everyone in this place also recognises our potential as a nation when it comes to a combination of energy resource capabilities. We all want ongoing employment opportunities and we all want to see a secure economy. But, respectfully, where and how we differ is on what our nation's balance of priorities in this area should be.

I will try to break down into digestible terms what this bill does include and why we in the coalition believe it to be both ineffective and ill conceived. In fact, I will go a step further. To be truly objective, I'll use the words 'economists' and 'industry experts' lest I be accused of politicising the issue. In basic terms, this bill expands the role of Export Finance Australia and ARENA and establishes the so-called 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 and demonstration role to support manufacturing, deployment and commercialisation. That sounds straightforward and simple, but each of those changes is fraught with danger and unintended knock-on effects. In very real terms, it demonstrate an arrogance of 'government knows best'. The people who know best are the manufacturers and the producers, the people who have been doing it for year after year, decade after decade and generation after generation. This is what we fear in the regions. We fear the government arrogance, and that sentiment strikes fear into economists and entrepreneurs alike.

The notion that the government or in this case individual ministers have their finger on the pulse of the competitive manufacturing market is a truly bizarre one. Our own Treasurer, and I'm quite surprised by this, described his time in the private sector as 'six long, long months'. It truly does give an insight into the Treasurer's thinking and experience—or lack of experience. Having been in business for 16 years on my own, and I know the member for Fisher was in business for many years, I can say that 'six long months' gives a real insight.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's running the joint.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's supposedly running the joint, and he and his fellow career staffers and political ministers will ultimately determine where billions of dollars of taxpayer money will be directed. It will be a captain's call, a Treasurer's pick. As the government appointed head of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, recently lamented:

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

Welcome to the age of entitlement for captain's picks in certain areas of manufacturing. That's exactly what this bill is about to do.

With our current economic reality, there is no room for error when it comes to government investment. Currently $22.7 billion of taxpayer money is at risk, and if we are to have any hope of combating inflation and stimulating growth, an investment of that magnitude has to be a sure thing. I'm not a wowser; I don't mind a punt. But I never bet above my limit and I never bet with other people's money, and that is what this government is doing. They are betting above the limit and they're betting with the taxpayer's money. You see the ads on TV: 'gamble responsibly' and 'you win some, you lose more'. These are the ads that the government is now refusing to remove despite the recommendations by the former member for Dunkley. It seems really ironic. That slogan should apply to the minister and the government here. You win some, you lose more. This better be a sure thing because you will be losing the taxpayers' money.

The bill introduces the National Interest Framework, giving the government power to identify and invest in projects that are deemed of national interest. This means the government will facilitate private investments. Priority industries will be identified under two streams: the net zero transformation stream and the economic resilience and security stream. The net zero transformation stream will be focused on sectors that make a substantial contribution to achieving net zero, while the economic resilience and security stream will centralise on sectors that the government deems are critical to our resilience and that currently need government support to get beyond a starting point. Let me talk about net zero. We have an obligation to look after our planet. Absolutely, we do. We are working together, albeit differently, to achieve that. But let's look at the real facts. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 0.04 per cent. Australia emits 1.3 per cent of that 0.04 per cent, yet with this bill we are hurtling down a road that will impose an impost of billions of dollars on the taxpayer for something that we, as Australians on both sides of the floor, have made much progress in.

Why should we exclude other manufacturers from being able to access this type of funding? Again, it comes down to a captain's call. To obtain Future Made in Australia support, businesses must meet community benefit principles of promoting safe and secure jobs that are well-paid, have good conditions and produce more skilled and inclusive workforces that invest in training and skills development and that engage collaboratively in achieving positive outcomes for all communities. They all sound reasonable on paper. There's no doubt about that. That's the ambition of the nation. How will that benefit the existing manufacturers in my electorate of Cowper who are ready to expand but who might not be ready to meet that criteria?

In relation to the net zero transformation stream, we're actually ignoring the current realities when it comes to our global competitors. The government announced this policy earlier with a $1 billion publicly funded initiative to establish an entire solar panel chain in Australia. The spend was presented in the headlines as a step towards creating a manufacturing base for solar products in our sunburnt country. And who can do it better—right? But the reality is that our current domestic solar efforts are no more than assembly lines for Chinese products. I'm not saying that to be dramatic. It's a fact. It's a reality. We are bringing over Chinese products and putting them on an assembly line to be put together—nothing more. That's not manufacturing.

I listened to the member for Fowler, who's not in the chamber at the moment. She so eloquently noted in her own address on this topic that to establish such industrial capability would require an investment not of a measly $1 billion but many times that. And then we'd still not be competing with China for customers outside our own borders—with a country that not only leads this sector with low-cost but high-quality products but also is supported by having a massive trained workforce at its fingertips. We cannot be blindly arrogant enough to believe that we can compete in that arena. We will continue to import from China. We will continue to just put things together—little Lego blocks. It's equivalent to flogging a dead horse; it truly is.

If the coalition were putting forward a bill with this title we'd handle things differently. We would acknowledge the existing successful small and medium businesses and the burdens that they are currently carrying to keep themselves viable. We'd look at easing those burdens, not provide handouts to individual companies for them to become dependent on. We'd look at tax reforms for successful manufacturers, not at avenues for those without successful business plans to live perpetually off the government purse because they chose products that aligned with the government ideology. We would acknowledge our significant strengths as a manufacturing, mining and agricultural leader and play to those strengths, rather than forcing government ideology and personal priorities onto a free market. We'd look at the crux of every issue. We'd look at lowering inflation, putting downward pressure on costs to businesses, and make it easier for those in manufacturing and regional or rural areas to get on with it.

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

'Coulda, woulda, shoulda'—if only they'd been in government for the last 10 years they could have done all those things the last speaker just said he wishes they could do!

Politicians often get accused of thinking too short-term. I hear that. In my community, you hear it around, particularly from older Australians: 'Why is everything so short-term?' That's sometimes a fair criticism; it is. And sometimes it's not. Three-year terms don't help, as I'm sure most people would agree. I think Bob Hawke tried to deal with that—a little constitutional change in the 1980s—and it got voted down. Maybe you'd get a different result now, given that Australians have experienced four-year state and territory government terms now. But the truth is that we should do more long-term things, I reckon. I think particularly, though, we should welcome it when governments of either side bring forward propositions, bring forward legislation to the parliament that is about the long term. The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is absolutely about the long term for our country.

I've always maintained that it's Labor governments that are called into being by the Australian people to do those big things. If you look through the history of our country, it's Labor governments that make the big changes, such as Medicare under Bob Hawke. We on the Labor side of politics spent 20 years trying to build a universal healthcare system.

An honourable member: Gough Whitlam.

That's right: Gough Whitlam had a crack. Then the Liberals got in, under Malcolm Fraser, and abolished it. Then Bob Hawke put it in, and you went to election after election after election promising to abolish Medicare, to abolish the universal healthcare system, until finally even this mob figured out that they couldn't win an election in this country without at least pretending to support Medicare. That's what they do: they pretend to support it. Similarly with the superannuation system: it was the Labor government that did that big long-term thing and put in the superannuation system. And of course this mob pretend to support it and then nibble away, nibble away, undermine, cut, cut, cut. It's a Labor government now that's building the early childhood education system. One of the smartest investments that our country could make if we wanted to be a wealthier country 20 or 30 years from now would be in the human capital of the next generation.

Similarly, a Future Made in Australia is about rebuilding the industrial base of our country. That's a big thing. It's a generational project; it's not going to happen this year or in five years. The fruits of this labour will be seen in the coming 10 or 20 years and beyond as we rebuild industries and bring back jobs that have been lost overseas. The record of this mob over there: about a decade ago they stood up at the dispatch box and dared car industry to leave Australia. They chased them out of our country and then cheered them on as they left. Well, we have a different view.

But the world has also changed. It's really important that we understand the context for the Future Made in Australia legislation and investments. We learned some lessons from COVID about supply-chain resilience, that the just-in-time economy—which pure economists, perhaps over the neoliberal era, an era of unchallenged globalisation, would say made sense in textbooks, in order to maximise your wealth—carries enormous risks when it's disrupted, as it was during the pandemic. We couldn't make medical equipment here. We found how vulnerable we were with pharmaceuticals. If you want to have a look at strategic vulnerability, have a look at our fuel resilience in our industrial base—the geopolitical overlay of increasing uncertainty, with wars and conflicts breaking out around the world and the greatest risk of conflict in our region that we've seen for decades. But it is also about competition, because other countries are cottoning on to this, too. The concept of 'friendsuring' is out there, as we think about how we rebalance our reliance on vulnerable supply chains.

All these things set the context for the Future Made in Australia agenda. Manufacturing is actually still the largest single employment sector in my electorate in south-east Melbourne. I'm proud to represent and have part of the great south-east Melbourne industrial precinct in Bruce, shared with Isaacs and Holt. The members for Isaacs and Holt and I talk about this often, at the heart of that great nationally significant manufacturing precinct. And manufacturing jobs are good jobs. They're jobs that are increasingly high wage, high skill and high value.

I talked in my first speech about success in manufacturing being a bit like the story of agriculture in many senses over a hundred years or more. More investment in technology, more investment in skills and more investment in science and research, and knowledge capitalisation means higher productivity and higher wealth. There are not always more jobs but there are better jobs. There's no great argument with those facts.

But success in manufacturing in the years to come relies on skills, technology and cheap power. We'll need to reclaim the advantage we had through the 1960s and 1970s of cheap, ubiquitous energy. And renewable energy is the cheapest form of new power. The economics are clear. The government gets it, economists get it and industry gets it. Pretty much the only people left in the country that don't get it are those opposite. They hear the word 'renewables' and their little brains explode. I should issue a trigger warning before I talk about renewables.

The National Reconstruction Fund with its $15 billion of loans and equity investments to support new investments in priority sectors and a $392 million industry growth program both sit alongside the Future Made in Australia agenda, because we need to do more. The old neoliberal consensus that's dominated thinking around this stuff for the last few decades along with untrammelled globalisation just don't work anymore. The world has changed and we have to change too. Other developed nations have figured this out, and Australia must not get left behind. This is not new protectionism, as those opposite keep crying. It's not. It's not about putting walls up. It's about government being a partner in building the foundations to support new investment to come into those sectors that we need—to build new enterprises, new sectors and new firms.

Australians do understand change and we understand risk. We're a pragmatic people. We live on an island continent at the bottom of a region with 3½ billion or more people. The world doesn't owe us a living. We've got the most enormous opportunities, we're in the fastest growing region in human history. The world's economic centre has been moving from Europe towards Asia, right above us, faster than at any time in recorded human history. That rate of change is accelerating. Geopolitical competition is already expressing itself in conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and the risk of further, and our own region is the focus of this competition. The transition of billions of people from low and middle incomes to high-middle incomes and the transition from high emissions to low emissions—net zero emissions. We have the most to gain out of that transition of any OECD country because we've got the world's best renewable energy resources, if only we seize the opportunity and invest wisely in the industries that can take advantage of that and to partner with those industries.

I want to read a quote from the now Assistant Minister for Future Made in Australia, Senator Ayres—a very good friend of mine. He gave a beautiful speech to the Sydney Institute not long ago, talking about how he grew up on a farm in regional New South Wales, the failure of his family's farm—no shame in that—and his family's journey. Again, I should have issued a trigger warning because it punches the opposition's mythology that no Labor members have actually lived on farms or grown up on farms and that no Labor members have worked in businesses.

See they get triggered, don't they. They just like to spout the propaganda and paint their stereotypes. Anyway, I recommend Senator Ayres' speech to you. I might send you a copy. It's a very good speech.

I underscore the point. Our agenda is a long way from the lazy complacency that characterised your wasted decade under Abbott and Turnbull and Morrison. That wasted decade of decay and dysfunction and dithering and division. The fighting amongst yourselves. I could get out the Nemesis quotes, but time's short and I want to read that quote from Senator Ayres. He said:

As the Prime Minister said back in April, we need to aim high, be bold and build big to match the size of the opportunity in front of us. We have to get cracking. Australia has unlimited potential, but we do not have unlimited time. If we don't seize this moment, it will pass. If we don't take this chance, we won't get another. If we don't act to shape the future, the future will shape us.

That's exactly what the Future Made in Australia agenda is about—shaping the future and responding to the realities of the world, not the fantasy that we still live in the 1980s and can still run the same economic agenda, when the world has fundamentally changed. It's a very simple plan, in essence. We want Australia to be a country that makes more things here, because making more things here will grow our economy and create good jobs, spreading opportunity around the country, making the most of the natural resources and the advantages that we have—cheap, reliable renewable energy, a skilled workforce and an educated population—making more things here, making us more wealthy, more secure and more independent and building our resilience to future economic and strategic shocks. It's an economic plan for a better future.

Amidst of all this, what's the position of the opposition? I had the misfortune of being slightly wrongly advised by my office about the timing, so I ran in and had to endure two of the opposition's speeches—all that carping, nasty negativity that we've come to expect from the Leader of the Opposition. He's infecting them. Some of them are otherwise reasonable people. Actually, I had no idea who one of them was. I don't think I'd ever seen him before. Anyway, the other one seems liked quite a reasonable chap.

I'm glad you're all sitting down. You'd be shocked to know that the opposition, the alternative government of the country, are saying no to making more things in Australia, just like they said no to tax cuts and no to the National Reconstruction Fund. They voted no to energy rebates; that was a high point for them, wasn't it? They say fee-free TAFE, that skills agenda that underpins manufacturing, is 'a waste of money'—that's a direct quote. They attack CSIRO. They don't like science, facts or evidence. They said Australian manufacturing is 'a graveyard'—pretty insulting to the incredible number of local businesses and workers in my electorate, but those are their words.

They are saying no to the production tax credits at the moment. They say they're corporate welfare that might build new industries, like in critical and rare earth minerals, except when the opposition leader goes to Western Australia. Then they say: 'No, it doesn't mean no. It kind of means maybe, but we don't want to say that, because it kind of contradicts what we said. Maybe we mean yes, but we still say no.' They have no cost-of-living policies. You would have sat through question time. There were no questions on the cost of living. They have no policies on the cost of living. They've only got three policies. They're saying no to the Future Made in Australia policy, but they've only got three policies. I'll give them that; they do have three policies now.

They've got their policy for more expensive housing, through letting people raid and trash their retirement savings, superannuation, to push up the cost of housing. That's a genius idea—push up the cost of housing to make it more affordable. That's one of their policies. They've got their 'higher grocery prices' policy, where they'll split up Coles and Woolworths and Coles will buy some Woolies stores and Woolies will buy some Coles stores. That's their 'push up grocery prices' policy. Their third big one is their higher power prices and the risky nuclear reactors that are too expensive and too slow. That's their energy policy. Sometime in the 2040s they'll have a few nuclear reactors that'll cost goodness knows how many hundreds of billions. That's their energy policy.

There's no doubt, though, that the biggest threat to Australian jobs and investment is not the things I've outlined—not the changes in the global economy, not the supply chain disruption and not the international uncertainty. It's the Liberal-National coalition's 'no, no, no'. It's just more of Peter Dutton's nasty negativity. That's all they've got, and it's not a surprise. As I said, it has been a decade or so since they chased the car industry out of Australia. Now they want to sacrifice another generation of Australian jobs by saying no to the Future Made in Australia policy.

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

The member for Bruce will sit for a moment. The member for Hinkler, on a point of order.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have two, actually. The member should address members by their correct titles. We've given him a couple of chances, and he continues to flout them. On relevance, none of those elements are in this bill. If he could be relevant to the bill, that would be helpful.

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

Thank you, Member for Hinkler. You're quite correct. You should address the members by their correct title, Member for Bruce.

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

I'll rephrase. I'll say: it's just more of the Leader of the Opposition's nasty negativity. There is nothing positive to offer. The opposition stood up, speech after speech, rambling on about all sorts of stuff, but the core point is that they're going to vote no to the Future Made in Australia policy. They don't support Australian manufacturing. They're living in the past. The 1980s are gone, the world has changed and you'd better get on board.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These bills are another part of the utopian vision of the current Labor dominated government. The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is the principal bill. It comes in with the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. As I said, these bills are quite utopian in their aspirations, because they fail to address the fundamentals that will allow Australia to actually make things competitively again because they support this concept that we can turn the country into a manufacturing powerhouse based on sometimes there and sometimes not there weather-dependent renewable energy turning the whole industrial base into being reliant on the wind and sun. The legislation also picks winners. It is not picking fundamentals that will improve our economy, like a low corporate tax rate or genuine industrial reforms so that businesses can be flexible, adjustable and develop productivity, all the fundamentals that will enable our manufacturing, or value-adding of our minerals, making cheap, nutritious food and value-adding in all the other value chains manufacturing things out of our own commodities.

Just going into the details of these bills, they first of all create the National Interest Framework, which identifies which sectors are potential candidates for support under the Future Made in Australia policy. The legislation also defines this Orwellian concept of 'community benefit principles'. I thought, 'They are going to define a better corporate tax rate so companies look at Australia not as a high-taxing destination to invest in.' I thought: 'Wow! This will finally get rid of all that restrictive green tape that is making investments in minerals almost impossible.' I thought, 'Gee, they are going to bring in legislation that will get rid of green lawfare and vexatious claims that tie up projects for years.' And, as I mentioned, I thought there was the aspiration to get simpler industrial relations to enable productivity growth. But none of that is here.

All the legislation does is turn the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation into Export Finance Australia. So, instead of helping develop markets and underwriting exporters who want to get on with producing products that the world needs, it has none of that. It just gives Export Finance Australia a whole tranche of money. It also changes the ARENA agency from research funding and seed funding for primary renewable products into funding for more renewable energy facilities as if there wasn't enough help already. They have been getting assistance for 20 years or more, and they still have all the in-built advantages of our restrictive electricity market rules, which favour renewable energy.

The aim is to put more money into doing things which are deemed to create lower greenhouse gas emissions, but this doesn't affect the major problem. For the ultimate low-carbon energy, we are proposing we unban it and get involved in it to make our energy clean. The legislation doesn't mention funding highly efficient, low-emission, new ultrasupercritical coal plants that would reduce our coal plants' footprints by 40 per cent. It doesn't allow investment in gas exploration, which the markets are crying out for in the southern and eastern states, where there are gas energy shortcomings identified by all market operators which are making electricity generation and all the things that has gas as a feedstock much more expensive.

It also removes restrictions on staffing in the Renewable Energy Agency and empowers the finance minister to cherry-pick which of these green schemes she is going to put money into. That amount of money is quite considerable—$22.7 billion between the 2025-26 budget year and the 2038-39 budget year. This is not going to do what those proposing it think it will do. We have heard ad infinitum about us becoming a green energy superpower and re-energising the manufacturing sector. But the reality of these renewable energy generation systems is that they make the system very, very expensive. The one-off build costs are cheap—and they would want to be cheap because they only work, on average, 20 to 30 per cent of the time—but they only last for 10 to 15 years. The batteries, concrete and steel—the stuff that goes into renewable energy—is incredibly expensive and has an ultra-short lifespan, whereas you can get 40, 50, 60 or 70 years out of a well-maintained coal plant, and you can get the same out of a nuclear energy plant. The standards of building them mean that they have a design life of at least 40 years. Most around the world are being extended to 60 years, and there are a couple that will be hitting the 80-year mark before they cease working. The new ones are built to an incredibly high standard.

What I would also like to point out is some of the details of this bill. As I mentioned, the Renewable Energy Agency will also be funding manufacturing. There are some technical things that will benefit the economy. There is the National Hydrogen Technology Skills Training Centre and a cooperative research centre. There is the strengthening of approvals for energy projects. I got excited when I saw that. But—hey presto—it's not going to speed up the approvals process for things like a new gas field or a new source of diesel or petrol that runs the country now and for generations to come. No, it's only going to speed up the approval of green processes or green energy systems.

The rapid expansion of renewable energy across country Australia is quite scary at the moment. People are getting approvals in Queensland willy-nilly. People have mapped the footprint of this renewable energy superpower, and it is really quite destructive on the environment. In Queensland there is at least 600,000 hectares of remnant vegetation, or adjacent to national park high country, which is just going to be bulldozed for thousands of kilometres of access roads. It will destroy the flora and fauna in them, turning them into sterile wastelands. Koala habitats, wallabies—all those things that Australians see as our native jewels, both flora and fauna—are going to be excluded from those areas. The wind towers will use huge amounts of materials, and that's why their carbon footprint over their short lifespan makes them not as sustainable or green as they're advertised to be. They're actually quite destructive.

There's funding for green metals. I have just been to Korea and Japan. They are very keen for us to get hydrogen, but what they don't appreciate is us doing it by using renewable energy. We'll only be making it 20 to 35 per cent of the time depending on the vagaries of the weather. That is never going to be economical. If you think that expanding to have five or 10 times more renewable energy projects will guarantee permanent availability of energy, you are sadly misled. That is the whole premise of overbuilding all of these renewable energy projects. Unfortunately they're all highly correlated. That means they all stop at the same time and they all start at the same time, and that is dependent on the weather and the day-night cycle. Having a geographic spread and overbuilding installed capacity, as opposed to looking at what is going to generate cheap, reliable, available energy at the right voltage and frequency 24 hours a day—then we can talk about making green hydrogen or hydrogen economically.

None of this is going to do that. It is very difficult to commercialise hydrogen production unless you have a lot of industrial heat and a lot of electricity. You also need to have a whole lot of water if you want to make it green. The Americans have worked out that the only way they can do that in a green sense is to have electrolysis and high heat coming from nuclear plants and just dedicate them full on to making green hydrogen. But hydrogen has a huge negative energy return on the energy invested. It will remain a critical industrial chemical for lots processes—we'll need it for rockets, missiles and all those sorts of things as well—but it's not going to be a major replacement for internal combustion engines. It will have a place in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in big cities, where they can be close to sources of cheap hydrogen, but I don't think it's going to replace the internal combustion engine. Putting all our eggs into a weather dependent system that we build from stuff made overseas is not going to re-industrialise the Australian industry base; it will just make our electricity more expensive, and we'll probably de-industrialise more and be left holding all these renewable energy projects with a short lifespan that will end up being abandoned and have to be replaced. In fact, the early windfarms that were put in in South Australia and Victoria are already coming up for replacement.

If we want to make things in Australia again, we need to get those fundamentals going again. That means getting the market rules which restrict our baseload operators from operating efficiently—market reform won't cost a cent; it will just mean that people who have cheap electrons will be able to get their electrons onto the grid so our prices will go down. We need to address this first up. We also need to make sure our coal plants aren't prematurely closed. Some of the 11 or 12 plants in Germany that were fired up as they got rid of their nuclear energy are now keeping their industry afloat, but their grid isn't as clean as it would have been if they'd kept their nuclear plants going. That's what we are doing now. Victoria is subsidising the coal plants because the market rules make them uneconomical. It's not because they need to close; it's just that they're losing money, so they need to be subsidised. It is the same in New South Wales. It's ironic that this allegedly cheapest form of energy has all these inbuilt subsidies. They get preference to get onto the grid. They get paid for the electricity at the top spot price, not their bid price. They also get a large payment for every kilowatt-hour that goes onto the grid. A renewable energy generator gets a large-generator certificate. If it's rooftop solar, they get a small-scale technology certificate. These are second income streams.

By all means, we can make things in Australia again, but we have to address the fundamentals. The thing that made us a manufacturer of aluminium and steel and allowed us to develop a car industry was that we had cheap energy that was available all the time because we utilised our own resources. That's what we should be focusing on. So, if you want to make Australia make things again, I wouldn't be supporting this. Look at things in a rational way. At the moment, a lot of these policies are made by political scientists, not by hard-nosed engineers. That's what we need. We need to bring engineers back, and then we'll get a sensible energy policy.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have sat in on a number of these speeches because I did want to hear from the opposition about why they oppose the Future Made in Australia Bill. I am genuinely interested in their concerns and their objections to this bill. Let me read out some of the adjectives and other words that I have heard from those opposite: 'interventionist', 'command and control economy', 'market takeover', 'corporate welfare', 'socialist agenda' and, from the previous speaker, the member for Lyne, 'Orwellian' and 'utopian vision'.

It has been an interesting study on their thoughts on this policy, because there is a policy that does meet all of those adjectives and other descriptors, and it's not the Future Made in Australia policy; it is their nuclear policy. If there is a policy that is interventionist, command and control, a market takeover and Orwellian—sure, they may think it's a 'utopian vision' to have more nuclear reactors in this country—that is the one policy that is being offered in this place that does meet all of those descriptors, because there is no private investment in nuclear energy in Australia. They know that, and that's why they know that the government will have to fund it completely. There is currently no nuclear energy industry here. So what they are proposing is a complete market takeover—complete government control to get their nuclear energy policy up.

I am so surprised about their opposition to helping Australian companies and helping create more jobs here. It is clear that the only jobs they are willing to create are those in a nuclear industry in Australia, which is the only industry they're willing to back. It seems such a shame. If you look at their social media, they wrap themselves in the Australian flag, they talk about buying here in Australia and they talk about supporting Australian companies, and yet they refuse to back this bill, which is doing exactly that. The only industry that they're willing to back is the nuclear industry. So I've got some suggestions for those opposite. If you want to trademark a few company names, how about Nuclear Reactors R Us or CNR—Coalition Nuclear Reactors? These are some of the things that you may want to take forward.

The truth is that we on this side of the House genuinely back Australian companies outside the nuclear industry. Those opposite have offered up some suggestions for what might work in terms of industry policy and supporting Australian companies, but it's a bit hard to regard them as credible when we look at their track record. Economists and researchers at Harvard University have done a study into the economic complexities of countries around the world. While those opposite were in government, did our economy become more complex, diverse and rich? No. It became less complex. In the last decade alone, our economy became less complex, worsening by 12 positions in the global rankings. Countries around the world were trying to diversify their economies, increase advanced manufacturing, increase research and development, and support other sectors, but not this country—no. Those opposite refused to back manufacturing.

We are now ranked 93 out of 133 countries, which puts us below Uganda and just above Pakistan in terms of economic complexity. Thanks to those opposite, we are the lowest ranked OECD country when it comes to economic complexity, and we have fallen 38 places since this index was created in 1995. That demonstrates that it doesn't have to be this way. The Atlas of Economic Complexity said, 'Australia's worsening complexity has been driven by a lack of diversification of exports,' and our economy is 'less complex than would be expected for its income level', given we had the ninth highest GDP per capita in 2021. This is because of those opposite refusing to back industry, refusing to back Australian manufacturing and refusing to back Australian companies. All that they've relied on is digging things out of the ground. And we are a country that is blessed with great resources, absolutely, but we've got to do more than dig things out of the ground.

We've just finished up with the Olympics and we've got the Paralympics coming up, so I'm going to use a sporting analogy here. Essentially, what those opposite did was try to create a team around one star player. In this case, our star player was resources and, of course, we had the Sam Kerr of resources—we had great iron ore and great critical minerals. But that was all they relied on—that one star player. If that star player gets injured or becomes sick, or we're playing another team where they're able to defend against that star player, we're stuffed. That's exactly what they did when they were in government; they stuffed us. We don't want to just dig resources out of the ground, ship them offshore, have other countries add value to them and then ship them back so we can use their final products. It's time we started to add value ourselves here on shore.

Why does this matter? It matters because we have seen that when you are not diversified and your economy is vulnerable to these big economic shocks it's the community that suffers. We have seen significant global financial disruptions: the COVID pandemic, the wars in the Ukraine and Gaza and supply chain constraints. We saw what happened during the pandemic when, because we had no real medical manufacturing onshore, we were scrambling to buy masks, scrambling to get RATs and scrambling to get vaccinations. To be fair to those opposite, their former leader did not think it was a race. He wanted to stroll into that, and try to get vaccines, and we paid the price. It was the community that paid the price for their lack of foresight in trying to build up an onshore manufacturing capability.

We won't do what those opposite did. We know that we need to build resilience in our economy and that we need to diversify our economy, and this is exactly what the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 does. It is a plan to grow Australia's economic future and prosperity. It is a large, ambitious and bold plan, and it needs to be.

We are not alone in having industry policies. We've seen the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in the US. There are industry policies in Japan and Korea. There are industry policies around the world. The only people who aren't backing an industry policy are those opposite.

The government's Future Made in Australia agenda announced in the last budget is about attracting and enabling investment, making Australia a renewable energy superpower, value-adding to our resources and strengthening economic security. It's about backing Australian ideas, innovation, digital and science ideas, and investing in people and places. This is an investment in Australian research, an investment in Australian manufacturing, and an investment in Australian companies and Australian people.

This bill establishes a framework to foster and encourage private sector investment in the national interest for a future made in Australia, by seizing the opportunities of the changing global environment. There are two primary objectives in this bill: to attract more private investment and to make our economy more resilient to shocks. We'll unlock private investment, ensure economic resilience and security in critical sectors and supply chains, and support early applications of nascent technologies critical to the net zero transformation. We'll create a positive investment environment and enable businesses to take appropriate risks. We'll create a National Interest Framework to support better alignment of economic incentives with our national interests.

The National Interest Framework consists of two streams: the net zero transformation stream to identify and support sectors that could have a sustained, comparative advantage in a net zero global economy; and where public investment is likely to be needed for the sector to make a significant contribution to emissions reduction at an efficient cost. The Economic Resilience and Security Stream is there to identify where some level of domestic capability in the sector is a necessary or efficient way to deliver economic resilience and security, and where the private sector will not deliver the necessary investment in the sector in the absence of government support. The National Interest Framework will support Australian government consideration and decision-making in relation to significant public investment that unlocks private investment at scale in the national interest. We can see that there are companies that are already using Australian minerals to manufacture solar panels to put on our roofs. Researchers are making breakthroughs in science that will lead to new medicines and new technologies.

In my electorate of Reid, in the suburb of Silverwater—which is an advanced manufacturing powerhouse—there are two star residence there: RODE Microphones and BluGlass, a semiconductor manufacturer. These are advanced manufacturing success stories. At the 2023 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence, BluGlass was named the Australian Hero for its development and commercialisation of a new semiconductor technology. The company is a wonderful example of converting Australian research success into Australian manufacturing success. The research behind BluGlass was developed at Macquarie University. It was after a decade of research that they had a breakthrough in innovative compound semiconductor technology that they were able to use to develop high-performance laser diodes. These visible lasers are used in critical and emerging technologies, including robotics, advanced materials manufacturing, defence technologies, and scientific and biomedical applications. The semiconductors BluGlass produces lead the world with their energy-efficient performance. How were they able to create this product? With private investment, yes, but also with government support through the research and development tax incentive along with government grants and early-stage revenue. It was through a combination of private investment, government tax incentive, government grants and support that this company was able to be created, which is exactly what the Future Made in Australia Bill is talking about.

The other example of manufacturing excellence in my electorate is RODE Microphones. This high-end audio equipment of choice for podcasters and influencers everywhere comes from an Australian-made company. Its metal components are manufactured onsite from materials sourced from Australia and overseas, and they export 97 per cent of their manufactured goods, largely to the US and Europe. When faced with fierce competition from a Chinese government-backed company on their bestselling product, RODE did not falter; instead, they innovated. In just 100 business days—a timeframe that would make most companies baulk—RODE went from concept to market with a new, superior product. This rapid response was possible only because RODE Microphones manufactures everything in-house, right here in Australia. RODE's founder Peter Freedman said: 'I just walk across the road and talk to the engineers. Two days later, we 're making it.' That's the sort of thinking that we want to be encouraging with this bill.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill and to follow the member for Reid, who has shared with us a remarkable collection of nonsequiturs and logical inconsistencies as she grasps around for some kind of argument in favour of what is, in fact, a naive piece of interventionist policy which is premised on the fundamentally false assumption that ministers and bureaucrats can do a better job of predicting what the market might be interested in paying for than private sector participants.

I want to touch on the companies that she mentioned at the end of her speech. We all celebrate RODE, which is a remarkable Australian company that's built a global position in microphones and audio engineering. You could mention a range of other successful Australian companies that are manufacturing, exporting and building global scale and global market share. You could mention Cochlear, with the position they've built up in hearing implants over 30 or 40 years of sustained hard work based on research done in Australia, originally at the University of Melbourne, now based at the Hearing Hub at Macquarie University. You could mention CSL, which has similarly established a global position in particular market segments to do with plasma and other important elements of the medical value chain based on distinctive expertise and using that expertise to build a global market position.

Or you could mention earlier stage companies. One that I would mention is Baraja, which, for a period of time, was based at CSIRO in West Lindfield in my electorate. The two PhD qualified men who founded it took the idea of dense wave division multiplexing, which is well known in telecommunications, and said, 'We think we could use this to come up with an innovative way of doing LiDAR.' LiDAR is the key component that is used in automated vehicles to sense the area through which the vehicle is driving. Their insight was that, if you split the light wave into all of the different colour components, you can get much richer data coming back to the sensor. That idea of splitting is fundamental to the way that dense wave division multiplexing works. Indeed, there's been a whole research tradition of this in Australia, with companies like Redfern Photonics, going back 30 or 40 years.

So let's be clear: nobody is contesting the proposition that it is a very good and desirable thing to have companies that take distinctive intellectual property developed in laboratories or universities in Australia and use that to build a global market position and employ thousands of people. Take CSL. They employ many thousands of people around the world. I think they operate in around 40 countries around the world. Nobody is contesting that that is a very good and desirable thing. What is being contested by this side of the House is the proposition that the best way to get to that outcome and generate more such companies and more prosperity, employ more people and build competitive positions in these intensely competitive sectors is to involve ministers and bureaucrats in developing things like Future Made in Australia plans, who are suddenly going to find new insights, new ways and new market opportunities that those dunderheads in the private sector had missed.

This is not a new idea. There is a long list of disastrous attempts to do this kind of thing in countries around the world. We laugh now at the idea of five-year plans setting out targets for the number of tractors to be built. That was a feature of the economy of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. We laugh now because that seems like such a foolish idea. Of course, most of the countries of Eastern Europe have now moved away from that model. We can look at China, which moved away from that model and recognised that a market based approach was likely to be much more successful. But, if you look at what this government is essentially trying to do here, their big idea, their big breakthrough, is that somehow, by having ministers and bureaucrats here in Canberra come up with these ripper plans, they're going to attract more private-sector capital and a thousand flowers will bloom across sector after sector after sector where those hopeless dunderheads in private industry have failed to date to capture the opportunities. That shows a touching faith and, on any objective view, a naive faith in the capacity of bureaucrats and of governments.

The proposition that I want to put to the House this evening is that these are bad bills and bad policies that the opposition is opposing for three fundamental reasons. Firstly, whenever you have bureaucrats, officials and ministers making choices about where to put significant chunks of public money, there's a very good chance that money will get squandered and the outcomes for taxpayers will be dismal.

The second point I wanted to make is that we have, with the PsiQuantum episode that we've learnt quite a bit about over the last few months—none of it encouraging—a very good case study of exactly what can go wrong and how to take almost $1 billion of public money and, if I can put it politely, splash it up against the wall. My confident prediction to you is that the taxpayer is not likely to get anything like 100 cents on the dollar back on that almost $1 billion. There's every chance that almost all of it will disappear, with very little to be received in exchange.

The third point I wanted to make, as many of my coalition colleagues have made very articulately and powerfully, is that there's a much better way to stimulate the economic and industrial activity and the growth that we all want to see—that is, by focusing on getting the basics right with cheaper energy prices and less complex, burdensome, expensive, difficult and non-globally-competitive industrial relations arrangements, as well as getting inflation under control so that businesses face lower operating costs.

Let's turn first to the proposition that, when you involve ministers and bureaucrats in setting out plans, you involve a lot of misallocated resources, a lot of wheel spinning and a lot of lengthy reports and plans being written by people who—I don't want to be rude—frankly have very little idea of what they're talking about. It is very evident in what is proposed here that there is real confusion about the roles of different bureaucratic entities. We're seeing an expansion of the role of ARENA, from research and development to, suddenly, manufacturing and deployment, where apparently their expertise has been hidden under a rock for 10 or more years.

Of course, it's equally troubling that, in the way this has all been set up, the bill gives the Minister for Climate Change and Energy the capacity to allocate additional funding to CEFC at the stroke of a pen and that the government under this bill would be able to roll out almost $4 billion in an election year. So there's very little reason to be confident that this kind of top-down industrial policy is going to produce the targeted results. There's every reason to be confident that it will waste a lot of taxpayers' money.

The Treasurer is going to decide whether a particular sector of the Australian economy deserves investment. How likely is it that the Treasurer will have success in allocating capital? Capital allocation is one of the fundamental disciplines in business, and successful businesses get very good at it. They have real discipline in the way they do it, whether it is conglomerate-type businesses like Wesfarmers or, of course—one of the beloved examples for corporate finance theorists around the world—Berkshire Hathaway. Those capital allocation disciplines are critical to generating a return. The Treasurer is a fine fellow, but I'm sorry to say he has zero experience in this. So I say to Australian taxpayers: you can have zero confidence in the people who are going to be allocating the money that's being proposed to be spent here.

Let me turn specifically, then, to a case study that is before us right now of what happens when a minister gets excited about a particular investment proposal. In this case, it is PsiQuantum, an American company—not an Australian company—based in Silicon Valley, in California. PsiQuantum came to Australia, knocking on the door, in 2022. They had a ripper proposal that the Australian government and one or more state governments should put hundreds of millions of dollars into building what they claimed was going to be the world's first fault tolerant, error corrected quantum computer, and Australia was going to get the very first chance to have one of those in specifically Queensland. The semiconductors contained in that computer won't be built in Australia because they are being built in Dresden in Germany and in New York state under agreements already signed by PsiQuantum with a company called GlobalFoundries. It's not as if the Australian government and the Queensland government are going to have any exclusivity here, actually, because just a few weeks ago the government of the US state of Illinois announced that they too are doing a deal with PsiQuantum to build a fault tolerant, error corrected computer. This one will go to Chicago. There are US$500 million available to subsidise that. So this agreement that the Australian government and the Queensland government have supposedly done with PsiQuantum doesn't secure any exclusivity.

Then there are all the process problems. How were PsiQuantum chosen? Why were they the ones who happened to knock on the door of the minister? The minister has personally met with them on several occasions. He visited their premises in Silicon Valley. Why did they get this huge chunk of funding and a whole bunch of other quantum companies actually based in Australia and founded by Australians, companies like Silicon Quantum Computing, Diraq, Quantum Drilling or Q-CTRL, didn't get any of this? Indeed, why is it that the best they got was several months later when the government conducted an expression-of-interest process which on any analysis was a reverse-engineered sham, the rules of which said that participants were not allowed to speak to Australian government officials? Don't forget that PsiQuantum had been given the opportunity for months to speak with Australian government officials up to and including the minister.

This is what happens when ministers give to themselves or are granted the power to splash around hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. It gets spent in ways that do not reflect a disciplined or fair process. The consequence will be, I confidently predict, that this money which is being committed to PsiQuantum will not produce the kinds of returns that the minister has been suggesting. Here is another prediction. According to the minister, this computer is going to start operating in 2026. I confidently predict that that will not happen. No industry expert believes that that's going to be achieved by that date.

My third proposition is that there is a much better way. If you want to encourage Australian companies to be innovative, to be successful and to export, create the business conditions which make it more attractive for private sector businesses and investments to allocate capital and to put capital at risk. Get inflation down by controlling government spending. Rather than changing the industrial relations rules so that the crooks and thugs at the CFMEU can knock on the door and—in fact, without even knocking on the door—march into workplaces all around Australia, reverse those disastrous changes. Make it easier to do business and impose fewer burdensome, costly and entirely globally uncompetitive industrial relations rules. Those are the basics. Then, of course, we need to get the cost of energy down. The cost of energy was promised to go down. It is going up and up. In business after business, that is creating huge problems for our global competitiveness. This fantasy notion that ministers and bureaucrats can pick winners that the private sector has missed is a recipe to waste a lot of taxpayer money. We on this side of the House are root and branch opposed to what is a very bad idea.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad the member for Bradfield has finished his speech, because my ears are hurting from all the predictions he made. Thank you for your predictions, but I'm sure Australia doesn't want to hear predictions; Australia wants to see something get done. And I rise today to speak in support of the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. This legislation aims to reshape our industrial landscape and secure a prosperous future for all Australians.

When I think about this country in its glory days, one sector stands out above all others: the manufacturing sector. We were once a country that made things right here in Australia. We made the mighty Holden Commodore, when our car manufacturing industry was roaring. We produced vast amounts of steel at the BHP steelworks in Newcastle—and if you want to see some of that Newie steel, just look straight above us, because the flagpole is newie steel; that's from Newcastle, that steel. We even made socks and jocks in my electorate, in Cessnock, at the old Bonds factory. Manufacturing is a sector that Australians were proud of, and it often helped to form the identity of our working class towns. That's why Newcastle will always be known as a steel city. But, sadly, year after year, one by one, the businesses that made things here began to close. There are many different reasons for this, and I'm not going to point fingers, but the fact of the matter is that we became a country that just doesn't make things like we used to, and I think that's an absolute tragedy.

Fortunately, this government is a government with a vision—a vision to bring back manufacturing to Australia, a vision to bring back our glory days. We want our future to be made right here. That's why we're investing in a Future Made in Australia, to unlock private investment in future industries and bring new jobs and opportunities to communities right across the country.

We are in an exciting time right now. Plenty of opportunities are presenting themselves, and it's vital that we as a country are placed in a position where we are able to make the most of these opportunities. The world is moving towards net zero; there's no doubt about that. This means there are tonnes of opportunities to make the most of the economic and industrial benefits that are coming. This bill is about positioning us to develop the technology and the products that will not only power our own future but also play a big part in the future of countries all around the world, ensuring that it is our industry and economy that benefit from the changes that are occurring globally. This bill will help Australia build a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy powered by renewable energy and other technologies of the future. It will create more secure, well-paid jobs and encourage and facilitate the private sector investment required to make Australia an indispensable part of the global net zero economy.

I don't know about those who sit opposite, but I will never say no to or stand in the way of something that brings well-paid and secure jobs to Australia in the future and now. If we can encourage the private sector to invest and bring these jobs here, then we absolutely should. If you're going to succeed in anything, you need to know your strengths and make the most of them. Our strengths are in our industrial resources, skills and energy base, and our attractiveness as an investment destination. We would be crazy not to make the most of these strengths by building our future here.

This bill recognises this reality and recognises that if our industry and our economy are to grow it will be on the back of our strengths. We already have an advantage in new sectors like renewable energy. We have a lot of land, we are a sunny country and we have lots of places where it's extremely windy. We need to combine this advantage with our traditional strengths in resources and manufacturing to build new opportunities, including in critical minerals processing, green metals, clean energy technologies, and low-carbon liquid fuels. Luckily for our industry and our economy, the bill and the omnibus bill deliver on key elements of the government's Future Made in Australia plan announced on the 2024-25 budget. They'll help to deliver our plan by imposing rigour on government decision-making and providing investors with the clarity and certainty to invest and unlock growth in our economy.

It also provides the framework and specific initiatives to mobilise the private capital we need to make the most of shifts in the global economy. As the Prime Minister has repeatedly outlined, the Hunter will play a huge role in achieving this ambition. Ahead of us lie big nation-building and region-building endeavours that can propel us forward. With the backing of the $22 billion Future Made in Australia fund, it is a great time for regions, especially regions like mine, where we've been manufacturing and building things for a long time and plan to do so well into the future. By making the most of this transition, we are creating safe, secure jobs for our workers to move into as our traditional industries start to change over time.

Unlike some of those opposite, who just play dress-up and pretend to understand the needs of the regions, Labor has a real vision to keep regional Australia booming. We won't hold back on making the most of the opportunities of the future. Unlike those opposite, our vision is not pie-in-the-sky nuclear power plants that wouldn't be here in the next 20 years even if they had it their way. Our vision is backed by real action on the ground, real funding, real programs and real jobs right now. That's what the Labor government's Future Made in Australia plan is all about.

This boom is especially good for regional Australia, electorates like mine in the Hunter and electorates like Paterson, Newcastle and Shortland as well. Those areas really do need this. In the Hunter we are building on our strengths with our manufacturing background and strong skill base. We are in the heart of many great industries in the Hunter, and the $23 billion Future Made in Australia package will ensure we are the heart of many great industries for generations to come. Our success in the Hunter will be Australia's success.

Take Ampcontrol, a great company based in our region, with two workshops in the Hunter. This company is building innovative electric products that are cleaner and more reliable than the ageing products they are replacing. They have jumped on the opportunities the clean energy transition is creating and, in doing so, they are manufacturing in the Hunter, creating safe, secure and well-paid jobs. The products are cutting edge and not just being used in Australia but also being exported overseas.

We have also announced we will be building world-class solar panels on the sites of decommissioned power stations like at Liddell.

As the world changes and industry changes, workers feel a sense of uncertainty, but, by establishing new industries with well-paid, secure jobs, workers can see the direction that we're heading in the future and they will have the certainty they need to be able to embrace it.

There are very specific kinds of investment that we want this bill to drive. We want investments that promote safe and secure jobs that are well paid and have great conditions. We want investments to develop more skilled and inclusive workforces, including by investing in training and skills development and broadening opportunities for workplace participation. We also want investments that encourage and work together to achieve positive outcomes for local communities such as First Nations communities and communities directly affected by the transition to net zero. We also want investments that strengthen domestic industrial capabilities, including through stronger local supply chains that demonstrate transparency and compliance in relation to the management of their tax affairs, including benefits received under Future Made in Australia supports. If we have people or companies making investments that tick all of these boxes, we will be well placed to build a future here and make the most of the challenges that will come.

At the end of the day, the Future Made in Australia Bill will do three critical things. It empowers the government's new National Interest Framework to identify where we have a genuine advantage over other countries as we transition to net zero economy. This ensures that we enter this new economy on the strongest foot possible, playing to our strengths. It establishes a robust sector assessment process to help improve understanding of how government can best leverage private investment in areas of the economy aligned with the framework and help inform rigorous government decision-making. It defines a set of community benefit principles to ensure that the benefits of the Future Made in Australia support, and the private sector investment it enables, flow to local communities, workers and businesses. We need this bill for our country to grow and our economy to boom in years to come. This bill is good for industry, good for our economy and good for jobs. It's a win for all.

I want to continue a little bit now that I've finished the main part of my speech. I've heard a lot of people talk in this chamber, and I talk to thousands of people in the Hunter regularly. They tell me that they want to see us work together. They want to see both sides of this place and the crossbench work together so that we can make Australia a better place. Unfortunately, those opposite us here—some of them, many of them, if not all of them—are just saying no for the sake of saying no, and that's an absolute disgrace. This is $23 billion to go towards manufacturing in this country that those opposite are saying no to—that is absolutely terrible for the people of Australia. It shows those opposite have no faith in manufacturing for us in this country, while we on this side of the chamber know that that $23 billion will be spent very well. It will be spent on the right things to get manufacturing back in this country so that, hopefully, we can make socks and jocks back in Cessnock again. Hopefully, we can see so much other manufacturing happen: steel, and so many other things that can happen in the Hunter and Patterson and so many other places as well.

I am sure that in the next 12 months or so those opposite, when we go to an election, will try to use a speech like this against me into the future. What I want to say to the people of the Hunter is: while people want to buy our coal, we will always supply them that coal. We will always supply the export market. That is what Labor will do and that is what I will always fight for. That is what the member for Paterson will always fight for, that's what the member for Shortland will always fight for, and that is what the member for Newcastle will always fight for. Please just remember that when we do go to an election, because this will definitely come up. What I really hope is that those opposite stop saying no to everything that we put forward when we are trying to make Australia better. I really hope that we can work together—most Australians want us to work together—to try to make Australia a better place. Please, let's just work together and put our differences aside with politics. I know we have a little joke here and there, and I understand that, but we need to make sure we're doing the best for Australia. Let's work together and actually do that, because I guarantee we will have a lot more respect from the people of the Hunter and the people of the rest of Australia as well.

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

I rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill. I did listen carefully to the member for Hunter over there. He's a good bloke. He is a good bloke and we should try to work together. We do work together a lot in this place. I think the general public wouldn't understand how much we work together. They see the contest and us getting stuck into each other and they think that's all that happens here, but in the vast majority of work we do, we work together. I'm on a committee with the member for Hunter, and we work together well but, sorry mate.

I rise to speak on this bill, and to speak in opposition of this bill and the policy in general. It does come with a fantastic name—I'll give it that. You'd fall in love with the name very easily—the Future Made in Australia Bill—and I think that's what the Labor Party marketing people had in mind when they concocted it, but it's unfortunate that it doesn't actually correlate with the content of the bill. It is a bill that is designed to expand the role of the Export Finance Australia and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and establish a National Interest Framework that retrospectively underpins the government's Future Made in Australia policy. That sounds wonderful. I had a good read of the explanatory memorandum, and some of the bill, and I can say that I totally disagree with the premise here—that is that we're going to be creating manufacturing jobs by subsidising businesses that are not profitable or viable in the hope that one day they will be. In that explanatory memorandum there were a few things that jumped out at me. One of them was the phrase 'the green premium'—that's the extra money you have to pay for some of these technologies that can't be produced at the same price as with conventional methods now. I don't remember the green premium being mentioned before the last election by the Prime Minister. I suspect that the Australian punter, when they find out what the green premium is, will run away from it very quickly because if they think the cost-of-living crisis that they're in now is bad, it's going nowhere with your green premium. It's around to stay, and we will all be paying extra for this absolute fantasy that the Labor Party is involving Australians in with their extraordinarily damaging rush to 70 per cent renewables by 2030. It's really quite frightening.

We already manufacture a lot of good things in Australia, including in my electorate of Wide Bay. Indeed, under the regional growth fund the coalition had we supported business. We put out an expression of interest call for all businesses and all ideas that might be viable and create jobs in the regions to come forward and put their business case in and show us how they could develop with a bit of support and be viable straightaway. One of the great success stories was Rheinmetall NIOA which is now making high-tech 150 millimetre munitions shells that are being purchased all around the world. They've created a hundred jobs in Maryborough. That's what you need to do. You need to look at things and apply general, normal, competent economic standards and say, 'That's a winner and that's going to create jobs so let's invest in it.'

What this policy does is pick the winners based on an ideology, and on big government and on government telling businesses what they need to make, even though they are unviable, and subsidising it with taxpayers' money to the tune of something like $22 billion. This policy is going to effectively waste $22 billion in an international market where we trade with other economies. This is just pie in the sky. It is complete and utter pie in the sky.

What adds insult to injury is that this is happening in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when people are finding it difficult to pay their general bills. They've really got to think about how they're going to put those dollars together to afford to send the kids on an excursion or even to let the kids have food from the tuckshop a couple of times a week if that's what they want. They really have to think about it. The government is not focused on fixing those problems; they're focused on this ideological mission that is going to harm us.

The idea that our current inflation crisis, which is seeing us at the very back of the G10 nations in terms of recovering from anything that could be blamed on COVID, is quite extraordinary. It's homegrown. Even the Governor of the Reserve Bank has clearly articulated this is a spending problem and it is homegrown. You can only blame Vladimir Putin for so long. Under Labor we've seen extraordinary increases in prices for families and for businesses.

People are paying more income tax. The level of income tax is up by 20 per cent. Real wages for employees have actually collapsed in this time, while Labor's policies have forced prices up. It really is the stuff of nightmares.

This government is so taken up by its ideological mission to decarbonise Australia with 58 million solar panels and thousands and thousands of wind turbines that they've forgotten the job at hand, which is actually getting the settings right so Australian families can afford to live. They can spruik on as much as they like about subsidising high electricity prices, but you've got to create the fundamentals, create the environment, where those prices aren't high, and that's what they are not doing. They're having the opposite effect. Their policies are driving prices up; electricity prices are up by 20 per cent. The government are completely and utterly neglecting the primary job of a government, which is looking after Australians.

The other element to this is, what could we do to help businesses? What could we do without this interventionist, big government approach that the Albanese government has taken on? The first thing we could do would be to work on bringing electricity prices down, not subsidising them. We need to work on bringing them down because it's not only families but also businesses that are paying some of the highest electricity prices in Australia, and that is a big disincentive for people setting up in Australia.

One thing we have traditionally benefited from in Australia has been cheap and consistent electricity. Well, that's what we need. That needs to be the first order of priority, not decarbonising. We need to look at how we can extend the life of our coal-fired power, how we can get more gas into the system and use those traditional methods of providing electricity to industry and families to make sure that we're strong up until the time when we transition to a reliable emissions-free nuclear, if emissions-free is what the people want.

If we don't get these settings right, if we don't get it so as we can provide the confidence and cheap electricity for business, we're going to see more foreclosures. We're going to see insolvencies continue at a rate that we already have. Since Labor came to power, 19,000 businesses have become insolvent. That's the highest number since ASIC began collecting data. This tells a story. We've got an inflation crisis that is caused by government spending. This bill seeks to spend more money. This inflation crisis is hurting Australians, with the cost-of-living crisis and with interest rates and the cost of living generally going up, and this government is not addressing that. It is ideological madness to continue going down this path that will hurt Australians.

Getting back to the point that my friend the member for Hunter made about cooperation, this bill has not been criticised by only the coalition. This isn't just the coalition coming in and trying to take the bill apart. People in industry, government officials and bureaucrats from Treasury have warned against this. The Productivity Commission also has not only criticised the program but has warned that some of the already announced programs, such as those that deal with making solar panels and the PsiQuantum project announced by the government, should be subject to a stricter national interest test.

How this national interest test or this framework will actually apply is a little bit vague, really, and that brings me to the next point against this bill, which is that this is just an absolute opportunity for pork-barrelling and an abuse of public funds by a minister. These very vague terms give a minister the opportunity to write a cheque for up to nearly $4 billion in an election term where they want, when they want and how they want. That's not good. I heard the member for Indi, who sits on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Anti-Corruption Commission with me and the member for Menzies, highlight some concerns about that and about the way that will be applied, and I share her concerns. This is not a policy that withstands rigorous scrutiny at all.

What we need to do is ensure that we are bringing inflation down. We need to stop the mindless overspending of taxpayers' money—that's what we need to do first. We can do that by knocking on the head the absolutely mad policies, like providing tax credits—billions of dollars—to billionaires. That would be a good starting point. We also need to stop the red and green tape and the overregulation that this Albanese government has inflicted upon business, so that business can get about doing what they do rather than having to comply with all sorts of crazy environmental and bureaucratic red tape. We need to invest in and encourage our gas and mineral industries, which have been great industries in helping to build our nation. We need to fix the industrial relations system that the Labor Party have inflicted upon business. We heard the member who spoke before me speak about the ability of the CFMEU to come into workplaces around the country on demand, for no reason, even if there are no members. They're the sorts of things we need to fix. We need to give small businesses—the 2.5 million small businesses—a clear definition of what a casual worker is. That'd be a great start.

This bill fails at every level. This bill is big government, it is about subsidising industries that are not viable, and it's a complete and utter waste of taxpayers' money.

Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the extremely important Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit VEEM, a company with headquarters in Canning Vale in my electorate of Tangney. VEEM designs and manufactures high-technology marine propulsion and stabilisation systems for industry, including the defence industry. It was my absolute pleasure to welcome and host the Hon. Richard Marles on a visit to VEEM's headquarters, where we had the opportunity to learn about the company's commitment to innovation.

With cutting-edge technology and a state-of-the-art facility right in the heart of Tangney, VEEM is a great Tangney success story. And, with AUKUS opening global supply chain opportunities to Australian companies, VEEM is one example of how the Albanese Labor government is creating jobs and opportunities while supporting local businesses. I saw how VEEM prioritised research and development to meet the evolving needs of the defence, marine and aerospace industries. The local manufacturing industry has well-paid jobs and leading technology. It was wonderful to see, and it made me incredibly proud to be their representative. Half of what VEEM produces is exported around the world. This is an example of what Tangney and what Australia is and can do for the world.

In Tangney alone there are many factories and many local businesses with hardworking, highly skilled and talented professionals who are making the most of our resources and potential to manufacture for Australia and for the world. We have high-tech companies that are making advances for the world. We have skills and innovation that I am happy to see in Tangney and that I am proud to champion and advocate for.

The government's Future Made in Australia plan is about making things in Australia. It is about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero and ensuring Australia's place is secure and valued as part of the global economy and strategic landscape. This plan is a positive vision for a bright future, and one where the Australian economy is more secure, more diversified and more resilient. A future powered by renewable energy—with Australia as a renewable energy superpower.

This legislation will help Australia build a stronger, more diversified and more resilient economy that is powered by renewable energy. It will create more secure, well-paid jobs. It is about encouraging and facilitating the private sector investment required to make Australia an indispensable part of the global net zero economy. This bill is about seizing the opportunity that we have now to ensure that we all have a better future.

Our government understands the need for a technology-led, skilled and sustainable manufacturing industry so that we can fully participate in global markets for clean energy. By making things here and by adding value here, we have an opportunity to secure jobs for this generation and for more generations to come.

In my community of Tangney, many of my constituents ask me about our competitiveness. Because the people of Tangney are so diverse, many of my constituents bring a global lens to our conversations. They see a global environment that is changing and changing fast. They are worried about how we can compete. They want to know how we will make our economy more secure. They ask about job opportunities and if they will be skilled and well-paid. They look at their children and they see the future and ask me what we are doing to make sure that people have the skills they need to succeed. We do not want to be left behind because it is not only about the opportunity, there is also an urgency. The time is now, so let's get it done.

When I lived in Malaysia I knew Australia to be famous for many of the products that it is still well-known and still well-respected for today. But today—now and for our future—we cannot just continue to rely on the same extracting and the same exporting that we have done before. For our future prosperity we need a vision, we need to be forward thinking and we need to add value.

I'm proud to be part of a government that not only has a vision for our future but is taking action to deliver it. We need to take the traditional strengths we have in resources and manufacturing to build new opportunities, including in critical mineral processing, green metals, clean energy technologies and also in low carbon fuels. With the resources we have, we stand to have a great advantage so we can create things that the world will want from us. Australians are full of good ideas and innovation, and this is about realising opportunity from our natural advantages. Our future growth prospects lie at an intersection of our industrial, resources, skill and energy bases, and how attractive we are for investment.

I speak in support of Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. These bills impose rigour on government decision-making and help give investors the clarity and certainty they need to invest and unlock growth in our economy. We want to attract and mobilise more investment. The National Interest Framework in the Future Made in Australia Bill will help identify where Australia has a genuine comparative advantage in the net zero economy, where we have economic security and resilient imperative. This is a smart and considered framework, and this legislation also establishes a robust sector assessment process to help improve understanding of how government can best leverage private investment in the area of economy aligned with the framework.

My Labor colleagues and I all want to see communities across Australia benefit from a future made in Australia. This bill defines a set of important community benefit principles so that public and private investment will support and strengthen our communities. Hand-in-hand is the focus on skill, training and education, because public education is a big part of our future. For our future prosperity, we need to ensure that Australia has the skilled labour force in the area of need so that we can achieve our Future Made in Australia ambitions. This plan is focused on closing the gap in key areas of skill shortages, with new places at university and TAFE, an investment in the clean energy workforce and skills areas that lead to better, well-paid jobs in good conditions and that better benefit our communities.

Western Australia has a central and vital role to play as part of the Future Made in Australia. Western Australia has a lot to offer: WA resources, minerals and metals, WA institutions and Western Australians themselves, including our workers and businesses. WA is full of ideas. Our universities and bright minds are focused on the latest research. Our skilled workforce has impressive knowledge from geology to robotics, and those skills continued to grow. The demand for those skills continues to grow as well. It grows because, as industry and the global landscape changes, Western Australia adapts alongside them. The resources industry has long been a major part of the WA economy, and it has made significant achievement because of the industry's ability to evolve and to never stay still. WA invests in clean energy. The state champions cutting-edge technology to help maximise potential opportunities, and it is ready for opportunities that may present themselves in the future. WA embraces innovation and the productivity gains that come along with it—just like we need to continue to do with the Future Made in Australia plan. Western Australia is a key part of the success of the Future Made in Australia plan, and our experience, skills and ideas will be needed as we explore new opportunities, seek out new investment and engage with global markets.

I'm proud to speak in support of this bill that is part of the government's $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia budget package, which includes production tax incentives for hydrogen and critical minerals, the Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund, the Solar Sunshot program, the Battery Breakthrough Initiative, the National Interest Account and other initiatives to better attract and enable investment and make Australia an indispensable part of global supply chains, like VEEM and their propeller made of bronze and their gyro stabiliser in Tangney, which is one of the most advanced commercial facilities in the world, and other manufacturers and businesses in Tangney whose highly technical products are key parts of the global supply chains. Strengthening supply chains and ensuring that our talented people and their great ideas stay here—this is what this legislation is about.

Science and research technology are all at the forefront of a future made in Australia. And, just like a future made in Australia, it's not only one thing, one person or one industry. We all have a role to play in delivering this future—our future, made in Australia. I have been inspired to hear about the different local businesses across Tangney and learn about their work and the products that they export all over the world. I have been equally inspired by people in Tangney who are studying in these areas, people who are developing the skills we need in key areas and preparing for the future. Our government's investment in education, skills and training is so critical, as is, of course, the people who are developing the big ideas that can change the world. In my conversations with scientists, investors, small business owners, students and young people, I see so many people in Tangney with great ideas. A future made in Australia helps to back Australian innovation and science as well as the talents of our people. There is so much talent, skill and potential, and we cannot be afraid to have the necessary ambition to realise this potential. This plan is ambitious. (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, and I'll state from the outset that I am opposed to this bill. I've been listening to the speeches, particularly on the other side, and sometimes I think I'm in a high school debating club where you can signal your virtue and talk about wonderful things. The previous speaker, the member for Tangney, talked about high-paid jobs. I'm just wondering how that works when you take an operator off a D10 bulldozer because you've closed down their mine and you give them a bottle of Windex and a soft cloth to wipe the dust off solar panels. How does that actually work?

We've heard other members blame the coalition for the Holdens and the rest of the car industry leaving Australia. Would they keep subsidising it? The reason that Ford and Holden left Australia is that they made a product that no-one wanted to buy. We didn't lose the Kingswoods and the Falcons; we lost a large family sedan that was too low slung to go on a country road and too big for the city. A lot of people come to me and complain about the loss of Holden and Ford. When you ask them what they're driving, they say, 'Oh, it's a Hilux,' or something. So the Australian people made the decision about Holden and Ford leaving Australia. Following on from the speeches from the Labor Party, we would probably continue to be subsidising them to make something that they don't really want.

The previous member spoke about universities and getting the skills to undertake this new industry that we're going to have in our renewable powerhouse. I'm not sure what university course teaches you how to use a pop riveter, but that's the sort of skill you would need in a factory bolting together solar panels. I'm wondering where this workforce is going to come from. One of the reasons that manufacturing has moved offshore is the scarcity of labour. The industrial relations laws in this country have made it incredibly difficult. With the implementation of the IR agenda of this government now, small business has a huge disincentive to actually increase, because, once they get to 15 employees, they've got to have an on-site union organiser and open access to total strangers carrying the union card to influence their businesses.

The member for Reid made a very thoughtful contribution about the wonderful businesses that she's proud of in her electorate, and that's great, but they were done without this policy. That's the point. A lot of the Labor Party have shot themselves in the foot as they are spruiking how innovative their electorates are without this policy, so I'm not quite sure how that would go.

There are advantages—or disadvantages—to being in here for a long time. I was here when the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government came in. The day that they announced their climate change policy, Kandos, which was then in my electorate—it's not now; it's in Calare—closed the cement plant. So these innovative renewable projects that we're going to produce here are going to be stuck in the ground with cement that comes on a ship from Asia because the policies we put in place here have made it impossible to be competitive.

Here is a history lesson, folks: there are two things that made this country as great as it is. They are our ability to produce more food than we need and our ability to have cheap energy. I represent people that work in both of those sectors, and they are under constant attack day after day after day just to keep doing the things they do to keep this country viable. We have green protesters gluing themselves to the railway line at Newcastle because they are opposed to coal exports. At the same time, my grain and cotton producers can't get their trains to port. They miss the shipping deadline, causing enormous harm. What's worse, the ANZ bank have removed their funding for the Port of Newcastle to show their virtue to their customers and shareholders. It's the biggest exporting terminal that services my electorate, with potential to go into containers and other things. The disconnect we are seeing between people showing their virtue and what's practically possible here is actually mind-blowing.

Day after day after day, we talk about being a renewable energy powerhouse. Who in here knows that, for 43 minutes of every day, all the electricity generated in Japan comes from Narrabri? Who knows that? Do you know why? It's because it's low in sulphur and it's low in ash. Through the Healy power stations they're getting emissions similar to gas. But we're going to close that down.

We're talking here about lifting Indigenous people out of poverty. Who here knows that 250 Aboriginal people work in that mine at Narrabri and are earning $120,000 or $140,000 a year operating equipment there? They're going to rip that up. Who here knows that the Murray-Darling Basin, the food and fibre bowl of this country, now is under constant attack to remove our productivity so people elsewhere can feel good about themselves because they're protecting the environment? What's the biggest employer of Aboriginal people in my electorate after mining? It's water. So we're taking those jobs out. We'll be buying fruit from China, where there are none of the conditions that we have here. So this virtue signalling without any practical understanding of what it means is a huge issue for us here.

The actual powerhouse of our economy is not big business. It's smaller, innovative business. We've seen a few big corporate flyers circulating the halls of parliament with their hi-vis names on their vests, talking about hydrogen and things like that. Well, they're backing off that a bit now, aren't they? Where are the innovative small businesses?

A few months ago I was at the Ahrens factory in Gilgandra. They're producing grain silos. There's a lot of talk here about resilience. There is nothing that's going to make the ag sector more resilient than the ability to store grain and sell it when the market suits or store it as fodder for drought. The previous government had, in one year, 100 per cent instant asset write-off for preparation, for grain storage, for water and for infrastructure. There was an absolute boom in manufacturing in regional areas. The Ahrens factory at Gilgandra employs a large number of Indigenous people in highly paid, highly skilled jobs, but they say, 'No, we do away with that policy.' The instant asset write-off meant that farmers could purchase planters made in the member for New England's electorate, up at BOSS Engineering—a magnificent Australian success story. They are the absolute Rolls Royce of farm machinery. They could buy a planter and get that off their tax in one year, but, no, not now.

So we talk about ways of reducing our emissions. Inland Rail: one train from Melbourne to Brisbane takes 150 trucks off the road. How much is that saving on our carbon emissions? These factories that we're going to have in our capital cities will be producing all this stuff that's going to be shunted all over the place, so wouldn't it be good if we had an efficient, low-energy way of transporting that around, like Inland Rail? Wouldn't it be really good to have that? 'No, no, no. We're going to put a hold on that for God only knows how long.' God help you if you want to take a photo next to Inland Rail. Next thing you know the Senate is trying to pin you for trespassing. That's the level we've gotten to in this place.

Martinus, an Australian company, have developed this track-laying machine that can do a couple of kilometres of track a day. Where is it now? It is sitting collecting dust somewhere because that project has come to a halt. So how about in this country we stick to our knitting? How about we back those that know what they're doing and are doing a good job?

We don't subsidise something that we feel is philosophically important. That's the divide in this place now. Are the children of the members from the leafy suburbs or the teal seats going to go and bolt solar panels together, or is it their aspiration to say, 'We've saved the environment because we've subsidised a factory somewhere out in the suburbs where we don't have to look at it, but we really feel good about what we're doing for the environment'?

This is a classic example of where Labor just don't get it. My home town used to be a Labor town, with council workers, shearers, railway workers, timber workers and coalminers. All those people have left Labor. We've got copper and we've got gold. You don't think a bit of gold, silver, silicon or glass gets used in some of these solar panels? How are we going to make these things if we don't have the mines to mine them? Where's the energy going to come from to drive these factories? We're producing solar panels to generate energy so we can produce more solar panels, but where's the net gain to the country? What about the 20 million people outside Australia who rely on us to feed them? What's going to happen to them? We've got vegetation laws that are coming in because apparently growing crops is unseemly. The attack on our cattle is next. We've already seen the sheep industry devastated. Like those over there, I am very proud of my electorate for their innovation, their hard work and what they do. Why is it that they have to fight every day for their very existence?

So while all this sounds really good—and there was a bit of talk in Dubbo earlier this year about the hydrogen that's going to be produced there by a ship that comes around from Western Australia into Port Kembla and pumps it into the system and produces hydrogen in Dubbo. I'm not sure that I'm going to see that. Why don't we just back what Dubbo does well? The previous government put $10 million into the Bourke Shire Council to put in the infrastructure for a small animals abattoir. My goodness, fancy doing that! Guess what? In Bourke—they're probably about 70 or 80 per cent Indigenous—there are 150 jobs that weren't there five years ago. We're actually supplying food, and that's largely going to Muslim communities all over the world because of their fondness for goatmeat. That is a practical government investment that employs people, provides something that's actually needed and is not virtue signalling so that we can say at the next election: 'We're cooling the climate. We're going to build solar panels in Australia at three times the cost of China and hope someone wants to buy them.' I oppose this bill and I certainly hope that those in the Senate decide to do the same.

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Having been a member of this House for six years, I've seen my fair share of legislation pass. There's been some great work done in my six years here: legislation to support 10 days of paid domestic and family violence leave, which is something that I was particularly proud of, legislation to lower the cost of prescription drugs and legislation to establish the Net Zero Economy Authority, just to name a few. But, like many of us, my own engagement in politics and advocacy extends beyond my six years here.

I spent the best part of a decade as the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and, before that, I headed the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, this country's largest union with now around 350,000 members. Throughout my time working with the ACTU, with the ANMF or as a nurse before that, I was always involved in fighting for a fairer Australia and a more just world. It's a pursuit which many have taken up before me and, of course, many will take up after me, because political and social change never exist in isolation. They build off generations before you and have the potential to impact generations after.

To be able to make this change on the streets or in this House, you need to have an eye towards history. It's my view that every piece of legislation we consider in this place must be viewed within the broad sweep of history. To be able to make effective policy today, you learn from the past—from past mistakes and successes. And, as an elected representative, you must have an eye towards the generations to come. How will your policy impact future generations in 2040, 2060 or 2080? It is within this broader framework that I wholeheartedly speak to support the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and commend the Treasurer, the Minister for Industry and Science, the Prime Minister and the entire Labor government for its work in this space.

The 20th century, in many ways, was a golden age for Australian jobs and manufacturing. The governments of Chifley and Curtin played a key role in supporting our nation's reconstruction in the post-war period. The role of the state, aided and abetted by foreign investment, supported a healthy economy and a strong jobs market, an economy where things were made right here in Australia. It was an era of secure employment and decent wages and one where the fruits of our collective labour were shared equitably. The flow-on effects of the federal government's industry policy helped build our nation both literally in the infrastructure it produced and also its population. The flow-on effects of our strong economy contributed to the creation of things like the PBS, our public education system and our strong social safety net.

But, in the 1980s, we saw a change in our attitude to making things in this country. The government in those years—a Labor government, I might add—did foresee the negative impacts of deregulation. That government attempted to soften any of those changes that might have affected particularly workers with the advent of the social wage—Medicare, superannuation and protected bargaining. The global shift towards neoliberalisation, with its relentless pursuit of deregulation, privatisation and the dismantling of protections for workers, decimated our capacity to manufacture in Australia under the Howard years. It was a global trend, but it did actually peak under the Howard government when we saw the closure of countless factories, the offshoring of jobs and the erosion of our industrial base.

I grew up in working-class Richmond in Melbourne. It was a hive of manufacturing activity. We had shoe factories. We had textile and clothing factories. Skipping Girl Vinegar was there, and that wonderful and famous neon sign is still glowing to remind us of the glorious past. Vickers Ruwolt was just up the road from where I lived, making massive machinery for other industries. There were bakers, chocolate factories, soccer factories and shirt factories. Everywhere you went, there were factories around where I lived. That's all gone. It's all disappeared. For years and years, those factories stood there like ghosts. Now, they are gorgeous apartments. The whole suburb has changed with gentrification.

But once a pillar of our economy and a source of secure employment for many people, manufacturing was left to wither under the false promise that the market alone would provide. The result has been the hollowing out of communities, the loss of skilled jobs and a growing dependence on imports. It's left our economy vulnerable and our sovereign capability weak. Sovereign capability refers to a nation's capacity to independently produce and sustain the critical goods and services necessary for its security and wellbeing. It's about having the resilience to meet our needs, especially in times of crisis. According to the OECD, Australia was ranked last on manufacturing self-sufficiency compared to other member countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a harsh spotlight on how the loss of our manufacturing abilities from decades of neoliberal policies exposed the vulnerabilities in our sovereign capability. In 2020, as borders began to shut and supply chains slowed, we as a nation experienced shortages of medical supplies such as masks, vaccines and PPE. It quickly became evident that the offshoring of manufacturing had left us precariously dependent on global supply chains.

I am going to pause for a minute to talk about something else that happened over the last few decades. That is climate change, a topic that is very important to members of my community of Cooper. There is now scientific consensus that emissions from human activity are contributing to a changing climate. Despite many of those on the other side having their heads in the sand, it's not hard to see scorching heat across our summer, tropical diseases heading southward and a longer bushfire season. From north to south and from east to west, we're seeing extreme weather events just about every single week: floods, fire tornadoes and drought. Labor listens to the experts and understands the need to transition our economy away from one that relies on fossil fuels to one that is clean, green and energy efficient. Australia is actually ideally placed to benefit from the global transition to net zero due to our comparative advantages, capabilities and trade partnerships. There is a role for government to create a positive environment for investment, and the private sector is responding, but the government needs to do more. Did those opposite do this when they were in government? No. They could barely land an energy policy.

It is within this historical context—the loss of manufacturing, the loss of sovereign capability, delays in climate action and the opportunity to become a clean energy superpower—that the Labor government puts forward an option to the Australian people, an option for change. It is an option for stability and sustainability over a decade of climate denial and failed energy policies. It is an option for sovereignty and capability over a mismanaged COVID response. It is the option for a future made in Australia over the option of zero industry policy. It is the option of the Albanese Labor government over the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott failure. In May 2022 the Australian people made their choice. They chose a future made here. They chose action on climate change. They chose investment in renewables. They chose jobs in manufacturing. They chose a Labor government, the Albanese Labor government. Today that government is delivering on those commitments.

The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is truly a landmark piece of legislation, one that takes into account the historical context and present-day challenges that I've described while also setting up our country for generations to come. This is a piece of legislation that combines action on climate change, support for working people, investment in communities and security in our manufacturing and energy supply. It is legislation that maximises the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero and secures Australia's place in a changing global, economic and strategic landscape. It recognises that our future growth prospects lie at the intersection of our industrial, resource, skills and energy bases, and our attractiveness as an investment destination. It combines our comparative advantages in renewable energy with our traditional strengths in resources and manufacturing to build new opportunities, including in critical mineral processing, green metals, clean energy technologies and low carbon liquid fuels.

It delivers on key elements of the government's Future Made in Australia plan announced by the government in the 2024-25 budget. It's a plan that is the single biggest investment in action on climate change in this country. It's a $22.7 billion investment. Add to this the $20 billion that we have allocated to Rewiring the Nation, the $67 billion of clean energy private investment that will be opened up with our Capacity Investment Scheme and much, much more, and you have the biggest industrial policy that this country has ever seen.

What does the legislation do? It provides the framework and imposes rigour on government decision-making and substantial public investments. It has three key components. They are: embedding the government's National Interest Framework to help identify sectors where Australia has genuine comparative advantage; establishing a robust sector assessment process to understand and remove barriers to private investment; and establishing a set of community benefit principles that will make sure relevant Future Made in Australia investments create strong returns for local communities, workers and businesses.

The National Interest Framework is a game changer. It will prioritise investment in industries under two broad streams: the net zero transformation stream and the economic security and resilience stream. The net zero transformation stream will identify industries that can make a significant contribution to achieving net zero. The economic security and resilience stream will identify sectors that are critical to our resilience, that are vulnerable to supply disruptions and that require support to unlock sufficient private investment.

As you can see, Labor is doing the work to address crucial challenges that we face as a country—challenges that no other party in this parliament is capable of addressing—because in the Australian Labor Party we are not just about slogans; we are about action. We're a party of government, a party that is about getting things done. You see, Labor doesn't waste the precious time we have in this place by going about throwing personal insults or jibes at individuals who are doing their jobs. We don't waste the parliament's time pulling stunts and moving motions without doing any of the complex work and the hard slog that needs to go into seriously changing the laws in this country. We take the time and we make the effort to help bring about real change, and that is what this bill delivers. It's been painstakingly written, with all the consultation, legal advice and genius that go into these things, and I commend the Treasurer and his team for the long, hard hours that have gone into drafting this bill.

As the Speaker knows, the Labor Party is the party of working people, so a key part of this legislation is ensuring that the public investment, along with the private investment it attracts, flows to communities in ways that benefit workers and businesses. That's why a set of community benefit principles will be applied to the government investments. The principles will ensure that investments:

I started this speech by outlining some of the key pieces of legislation that I have been proud to witness in parliament, and today I am happy to add another bill to that list: the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. It's a bill that takes into account the history of this country. It learns from the past to make change for the present and will set us up for the future. Whether it be action on climate, support for working people, energy sustainability or sovereign capability—however you look at it—this is truly a wonderful piece of legislation by the Albanese Labor government, and I commend it to the House.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we talk about climate change, we often focus on the consequences of inaction. We talk about the floods and fires, the extreme heat and the destructive storms, and the existential threat that a warming planet poses to our society. But, alongside this environmental imperative, the need for urgent climate action presents a significant economic opportunity. It's an opportunity that people in my community want to seize, that green tech entrepreneurs want to talk to me about and that is the focus of the bills before the House today: the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. As the world weans itself off fossil fuels, Australia is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the clean energy transition. We have some of the best wind and solar resources in the world, we have many of the critical minerals that are key to the transition, and we have the skilled labour and stable institutional environment needed to make the most of these national advantages.

The size of the prize is significant. In the Sunshot report, the BCA, the ACF, the ACTU and the WWF estimated that Australia could create 395,000 new jobs by 2040 in clean energy exports, by selling commodities like green hydrogen or renewable ammonia, by processing critical minerals and higher-value metals, and by providing clean energy services to the world. Other analysis suggests the opportunity is even greater. The Superpower Institute estimate the annual value of green iron could be $295 billion, around three times the current value of our iron ore exports, and green aluminium could be worth a further $60 billion, around six times the current value of our bauxite and alumina exports combined.

It is vital that we seize these opportunities, not least because the export markets that have served us in the past will decline in the future. In 2022, two of Australia's top three exports were coal and gas, fossil fuels that are being phased out. Together, more than 97 per cent of our trade goes to partners with net-zero targets. That means a failure to shift out of fossil fuels and into the industries of the future would not only be a missed opportunity; it would also leave our economy dependent on industries in decline.

But this transition won't happen by accident. And whilst I'm not typically an advocate of intervention—and frankly, some of the government intervention mentioned by previous speakers makes me uncomfortable—in this case there are three reasons I believe that the state has a role to play. The first is that we don't have a price on carbon. The destruction of a carbon price by Tony Abbott's coalition government has meant that the cost of fossil fuel pollution—what it does to our environment—is not factored into the cost faced by producers or reflected in the price paid by consumers. The result of this unpriced negative externality means that low-emissions manufacturing processors face a significant green premium and can struggle to compete. An economy-wide carbon price is the best, cheapest and most effective way to address this market distortion. But a lack of courage from both the major parties means we are in the world of second-best policies, and financial support for green industries is necessary.

The second reason for intervention is that markets don't provide incentives for the early research and in-development stages of new technologies, and this is an appropriate area for government intervention, because early investors face high costs, low returns and the risk of free riding. And knowledge can be intangible, and there can be productivity spillovers that we do want to capture and foster in the early stages of technology development.

Thirdly, time is of the essence. We have only a couple of decades left to transform to a net zero economy, and the long life of many industrial assets means they are poorly suited to rapid change. Market forces alone won't deliver the pace of change we need to limit temperature rise to close to 1.5 degrees and avoid the most extreme impacts of global heating. Last year was the hottest year on record. This year temperatures are even higher. The clock is ticking.

Countries around the world recognise the need for action. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act contains more than $500 billion worth of funding to accelerate America's transition to net zero. In the EU the Net-Zero Industry Act provides extensive support to build manufacturing capabilities, matching many of the IRA subsidies. And in Japan the government has unveiled the green transformation policy to support more than $1 trillion in public-private financing opportunity.

In a world that competes for capital resources and talent, these packages put our peers at a huge advantage. I have spoken to many of our best and brightest companies in this space and to bankers as well, and they tell me of those challenges, of how to keep the most innovative and exciting of our companies in Australia. This is a real concern to us right now, because without an appropriate response the programs will permanently tilt the scales of world trade in these critical areas away from Australia, consigning us to a future of fewer jobs and less prosperity. The global race is on, and we can't afford to be left behind.

So, there is need for action; I accept that. However, there are many—and I would put myself on the list—who are concerned that the government's and previous governments' mixed track record when it comes to industry policy makes them nervous about the risk of picking winners, about the degree of ministerial discretion provided for in this legislation, about rent seeking by vested interests and about how ill-defined phrases like 'economic security' can be used to justify every minister's pet project. I'm worried about those who advocate for this policy on the basis of trying to bring back to Australia parts of manufacturing that have been gone for many years. While people do miss those jobs, we need to recognise that Australia's openness to trade, our ability to be a small trading nation, has actually been the bedrock of our prosperity and frankly the bedrock of the great economic quality of life that Australian consumers face. Frankly, if we had retained all the industries that I know many people wish were still here, Australian consumers would be the ones paying more, and that does no good for Australian prosperity.

So, I am concerned that this legislation can be used to justify things that are not in the interest of Australian consumers. Several of the concerns I have raised have been articulated by the chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood. And decisions made by this government, including things like the investment in a US quantum computing firm when there were other domestic options available and where they still haven't made a clear case as to why this company was invested in first, make me nervous. There are concerns here, but it doesn't mean we should do nothing. It doesn't mean we should sit on our hands. It means that we need to get this right. We need to get the legislation right, we need to get the actions right and we need to get the guardrails right to make sure that this policy is effective in delivering what is needed, driven by market failures, but is not used as an opportunity for wasting money and for wasting taxpayer money.

It means that we need policy where government builds a portfolio of investments that is developed using arms-length expert advice with appropriate off ramps and using instruments where taxpayers share the benefit. It means that we need strong institutional guardrails that put a robust framework around decision-making, that provide transparency over where funds are invested and that ensure accountability for how money is spent. It means that we need an Australian response to the IRA that doesn't go toe to toe with the financial might of the USA but leverages the specific opportunities available to Australia in those critical areas.

This brings me to the bill before the House today. The bill creates the National Interest Framework to help assess sectors for support under Future Made in Australia. It sets out the community benefit principles to ensure investments deliver for the community, and it makes changes that ensure the EFA and ARENA can support this agenda. I support the intent of the legislation, and the submissions to the Senate inquiry show that there is broad support for this agenda from those in the environmental sectors, finance sectors and the business community, including the Clean Energy Council, the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Climate Council, Climate Energy Finance, the Superpower Institute, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Aluminium Council, the Business Council of Australia and many, many others. But the submissions also highlight that, as currently drafted, the bill fails to deliver the framework we need to effectively seize Australia's opportunity to become a clean energy superpower.

When it comes to industry policy, it's imperative that a robust and transparent framework is in place to ensure taxpayers get value for money. We can't afford to make the mistakes of the past, where money was wasted on bailing out failing industries that never had a chance of standing on their own two feet, which, frankly, only delivered higher prices for Australian consumers. That does not work. And so, with that in mind, I urge the government to consider six key changes.

First, sector assessments must be required before a sector can receive support. The bill is supposed to provide financial discipline around Future Made in Australia spending, but sector assessments are not currently required before a sector can receive support. The loophole needs to be closed so that there is appropriate discipline around government spending. The government must also publish the assessments it has conducted so far, including those which relate to announcements in the May budget.

Second, Treasury must consult with the Productivity Commission during these sector assessments. The independent Productivity Commission has vital expertise, experience and methodologies in this kind of analysis and a healthy degree of scepticism, which I appreciate. They are experts, and we should listen to them.

Third, the government should clarify that, under Future Made in Australia, the support is not just financial. I think this is really critical because, time and time again, businesses have said, 'It's not just about government handouts and money. We actually have to get the operating environment right,' and this is where I do agree with elements of what the coalition is saying in this space. We have to get the operating environment right as well as ensuring that, where there is market failure, we are providing the support from a financial point of view. Both of those are critical if we are going to move forward.

Fourth, existing policies must be considered in sector assessments so that we can ensure additionality in measures put forward under Future Made in Australia and avoid duplication.

Fifth, sector assessments must consider the Climate Change Authority's Sector Pathways Review, which is already undertaking detailed analysis of the technology and emission pathways that will best support our transition to net zero.

Sixth, it should be mandatory for sector assessments to be periodically reviewed so that taxpayer money is invested wisely on an ongoing basis. This would also help in building the off ramps in policy design, as has been recommended by the Productivity Commission.

While these six areas are my focus, I would like to acknowledge the importance of other amendments being pursued by the crossbench, which are focused, again, on stronger transparency and accountability provisions. These are things like accelerating the creation of a single front door for investors to help make sense of the plethora of government supports available across Future Made in Australia and programs like the NRF. These amendments from across the crossbench also try to ensure that the focus of Future Made in Australia is on supporting emissions reduction and net zero, rather than the broader and, frankly, much less well-defined notion of national or economic security. I believe there are issues of national and economic security. But those are, frankly, very broad areas where all sorts of issues can be hidden and popped away, and where money can be wasted. I think we need an absolutely robust indication of why a sector deserves support that cannot be provided by the market before we make these sorts of investments. It is clear, in relation to green technology and in other areas of technology, that the case still needs to be made and needs to be made clearly.

Taxpayer support under the economic security stream of this legislation is much more open to porkbarrelling and abuse, and less justified by the market failures I outlined previously. We therefore need much stronger guardrails around investments and much greater clarity around the objective the government is trying to achieve.

I'd like to finish by talking about community benefits. The bill sets out a set of principles which should be adhered to by firms awarded support under the Future Made in Australia plan. It has good intent, and similar provisions are considered under the IRA. It is important that taxpayer investments do deliver well-paid jobs, and that First Nations people benefit in these new industries. However, these principles need to be defined in a way that also provides policy certainty for business. I have concerns that, as it's currently drafted, this may not be the case. I'm suggesting that the government considers and engages further with people like the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Industry Group to ensure that they have the right guardrails in this case.

I also would like to talk about how perhaps the most significant community benefit will be through future tax revenues, which we hope these future industries will generate. The Future Made in Australia plan will provide significant tax credits to industries like critical minerals and green hydrogen. I support these areas for those startup pieces. However, when companies get this great support from taxpayers and then earn, in the future, supernormal profits—if they have high prices—I also think it is appropriate for the Australian consumer, who has paid for the tax breaks, to get some of the benefits. It's vital that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past, where gas and mineral exporters have generated billions of dollars in profits for foreign-owned corporations but have not delivered for Australian taxpayers. I again urge the government to look at more serious tax reform.

I'd like to finish by concluding that the government needs to undertake this work with other pieces that will make it possible for us to realise our superpower advantages, because this will not deliver that on its own. Specifically, regulation reform through the EPBC, industrial relations reform through these areas and also an agenda around reducing complexity and red tape for businesses are all critical elements of a future made in Australia as well.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia needs a productivity boost if we are going to maintain our high living standards into the future. Income per head of the population in Australia has been falling for some decades. We had a small boost during the years of the mining boom, when there were large investments in capital that were associated with that, but that was short-lived. The previous coalition government had a very lazy approach to developing industry and basically no economic plan. They relied on resources and a 'she'll be right' attitude when it came to developing the Australian industry.

The last government that had a substantial plan to boost productivity in Australia was the Hawke-Keating government. Their economic reforms laid the foundations for three decades of economic growth and prosperity and, importantly, a rise in living standards, ensuring that Australians' incomes were increasing and that their quality of life was increasing too.

We need an industry plan. The industry plan in the 1980s and 1990s was built on reform of manufacturing—on reform of the textile industry, reform of the automotive industry, reform of aviation and reform of financial services. All of these reforms to elaborately transform manufacturing ensured that Australia remained competitive in a very competitive world, particularly in South-East Asia, where nations were moving into a developing status and establishing manufacturing industries at a lower cost to Australia. We managed to reform our industry to compete into the future. Without those reforms, we certainly wouldn't be enjoying the incomes that we do today, or the living standards. It's time for Australia to develop and implement another economic reform plan similar to the one developed by the Hawke and Keating governments. That's what the Future Made in Australia plan is all about.

We can't simply rely on resources and a 'she'll be right' attitude. We need to plan to attract capital investment in industries that will generate income, particularly given that we have an ageing population with a shrinking workforce and an increasing reliance on services—particularly health and aged care services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. If we're going to fund those services, we need to be generating additional income for the country.

The way to do that is through capital investment, but not just any capital investment. We need to make sure that we're investing in industries that will have a resilient future and will return income to the country. There's a global competition going on for capital investment. It's not so much happening in services, it's not happening in resources and it's not happening in infrastructure and construction. It's happening in renewable energy and the net zero economy and it's happening in artificial intelligence. Currently, a billion dollars a day is being invested in artificial intelligence in corporations throughout the world. Australia needs to make sure that we transform our economy so that we can compete for those vital investment dollars and create jobs and businesses, grow our economy and generate incomes for the future.

When it comes to those two industries, particularly the net zero economy and renewable energy, Australia has a natural competitive advantage. We've got the one thing that many countries don't have—both access to sunlight and access to wind. We've also got a great foundation and a great tradition of innovation when it comes to industry, particularly in this area.

This evening in the parliament, the University of New South Wales Showcase is celebrating their 75 years, and a big highlight of that showcase is reforms in the energy industry. The solar and photovoltaic developments that took place at the University of New South Wales have been commercialised throughout the world and there are no solar panels anywhere in the world that do not contain an innovation that was invented and commercialised at the University of New South Wales.

We've got a great tradition of being able to compete in these industries but we need to make sure that we're anticipating where the growth is going to be and we're attracting the capital. That will involve the participation of government through an industry policy.

Enter our Future Made in Australia plan. It's about triggering that capital investment to ensure that Australia is an attractive place to invest and that those industries can establish themselves and have a future in our country. Our plan is about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the global transformation to net zero and securing Australia's place in a changing economic and strategic landscape.

The bill delivers a number of elements of that Future Made in Australia plan. I want to talk about three key elements. Firstly, it embeds the government's new National Interest Framework to help identify where Australia has a genuine comparative advantage in a net zero economy or where we have an economic security and resilience imperative. Secondly, it establishes a robust sector assessment process to help improve understanding of how our government can best leverage private investment in areas of the economy aligned with the framework and help form rigorous government decision-making.

Thirdly, it defines a set of community benefit principles to ensure that the benefits of the Future Made in Australia program support the private sector investment it enables to flow to local communities, workers and businesses. In those areas, particularly in renewable energy, Australia has a great tradition and has been successful in government, partnering with industry to commercialise projects and business opportunities that would have otherwise have not been able to attract commercial investment and commercial capital without the assistance of government.

I'm speaking of course of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. That body has been able to leverage support from government with private capital to generate some wonderful new innovative solutions to the net zero transition and to ensure that in the process we're creating solid, sustainable businesses and jobs for Australians. We've got a history of doing this and doing it well. The Future Made in Australia Bill builds on that tradition and ensures that government partners with industry to trigger that investment in renewable energy, in the net zero economy and in artificial intelligence so that Australia can attract those investors to this country, establish those businesses, establish those industries, create jobs and ensure that we do have a future that is made in Australia.

Debate interrupted.