George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A prominent philosopher once said that events tend to occur in history twice, that the first time is tragedy and the second time is farce. Unfortunately, the approach this government has taken in the development of our manufacturing sector will lead us to a position in the not too distant future where we are going to be faced with a farce which will cost the Australian workforce dearly.

Let us look at what the Fraser government left this country in 1983, after seven years in office, when the current Prime Minister, John Howard, was Treasurer of this country. He left double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment set against figures that were substantially lower than they are now. Both of those were a legacy of John Howard’s treasurership of this country but, more than that, they left us a manufacturing industry in a state of crisis. It is not often spoken about, but not long after Labor came to power in 1983, BHP announced it was going to close its steelworks, that it was going to get out of steelmaking, and we had crises in a number of other manufacturing sectors, many of which were generated out of the Fraser government talking up the resources boom that did not happen and manufacturing companies redirecting their efforts into that resources boom.

I would remind people that in 1977 the state of manufacturing in this country was so perilous that the MTIA, the forerunner of the AiG, went around this country, in conjunction with the metal unions, holding forums in every state of Australia, with workers protesting about the state of manufacturing and its imminent collapse. That was 30 years ago under the Fraser government. The circumstances at the moment are exactly the same. Manufacturers, primarily through the AiG, and unions, including through my own union, the metal workers, have been consistently raising concerns about the lack of direction in our manufacturing sector, the narrowness of the Australian economy and the perils of basing our future wealth on the resources sector.

It would not be so bad doing that if we were insisting as a nation that in exchange for those resources we were getting a trade-off, that there was value-adding to those resources before they were shipped out of the country or that we had a hand in developing and manufacturing out of some of those resources into the global marketplace. But we do not. We simply dig it up, stick it on ships and send it overseas and then we bring it back as imported, manufactured goods.

Senator Ronaldson was quoting figures about manufacturing. What Senator Ronaldson did not tell the Senate about is the growth of imported manufactured goods into this country. What we are doing in terms of exports has been far outweighed by our absorption of imported goods, and this is causing difficulties in our trading relationships. But that side of the equation is never spoken about. In 1983, we were faced with a crisis in manufacturing in this country. What did the Labor government do under minister John Button? It initiated a number of industry plans.