Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

I know the opposition is always willing to learn. We do our best to inform them, and this will be yet another occasion for that. Senator Pratt has asked a very good question. I think we have to start from the premise that we appreciate the fact that the high value of the Australian dollar is making it very tough for manufacturing and the families it supports. We are going through one of the biggest structural changes our society has seen, probably the biggest structural change we have seen in our economic history. We face a situation in which we have some options available to us. One of the options the opposition seems to be pursuing is that we should give up, but that is not one the government favours.

We take the view that we should be confident—and we are confident—that the policy settings are right. But we always recognise that a lot more needs to be done. We recognise that for business today there is a simple message: innovate or perish. We understand just how important it is to build the capabilities of individual firms. We understand how important it is for our firms to move up the value chain to seek out new industrial processes and to seek out new industrial products. The economic statistics are pointing to the fact that the economic fundamentals of this country are actually very strong. This might surprise you, but the last national accounts showed that in terms of gross value added we had a growth in manufacturing of 2.8 per cent in the June quarter, or one per cent growth for the whole year across the manufacturing sector. For metal products, that growth was actually 9.7 per cent. That is a surprising set of statistics, but that is what is actually happening.

We work on the basis that we have to live in the real world. We have to understand the economy as it is, not the way we would like it to be and not the way we hope it will be one day. We have to deal with real-world economics, and that is what we do. (Time expired)