Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

In the very limited time available, I want to speak to this motion. Of course, we need a stronger and fairer Australia. It needs to be centred on secure jobs, but we need to have those jobs in the first place—well-paying jobs. There is great news coming out of South Australia today that the South Australian government has secured an arrangement with SolarReserve to build the $650 million solar thermal power plant at Port Augusta—something I negotiated with the federal government, and in particular Senator Cormann, to ensure the $110 million concession equity loan was in place for that, and that is a key pillar. I acknowledge Sam Johnson, the mayor of Port Augusta, who's in Canberra today, where he acknowledged the importance of that concessional loan to make sure the project can get off the ground—to underpin it. That's 4,000 jobs in regional South Australia, direct and indirect, that will come about as a result of this groundbreaking project.

The key to having jobs is to make sure that energy prices come down—whether it's in gas or electricity overall. We are facing an existential crisis in this country because gas prices are simply too high. Unless we deal with those gas prices, unless we have policies to tackle it head on, you can expect to see tens of thousands of jobs leave our shores in the coming months and years, and that's something we can't afford as a nation. Some of the measures by the federal government seem to be having a downward pressure on gas prices—things I negotiated with my colleagues in making the gas market more transparent in the first place.

But we need to go further. We need to tackle the decline in manufacturing. Six per cent of Australia's economy or GDP is based on manufacturing, compared to 12 per cent a decade ago. That is a shocking figure. I know that Senator Carr and others who have been champions of manufacturing in this country would be very alarmed at that. Contrast that with Germany, where 22 per cent of their GDP is based on manufacturing. Why? Because governments, private industry and unions work together in a collaborative way to build manufacturing. They have the Fraunhofer Institute, which has been a great success in getting synergy between industry, unions, the university sector and government to drive those good outcomes in manufacturing.

We need a procurement policy that must be implemented. Those changes at the end of last year were significant changes. They could be better, but they are significant changes. We need to tackle dumping laws and to be tougher on free trade agreements; we need to invest in education, trades and skills. When it comes to health, for goodness sake let's put an emphasis on preventive health so we can prevent people going to hospital in the first place. There are so many other issues to traverse, but I hope this gives a flavour of what the Nick Xenophon Team stands for.