Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Patrick, you urged me not to flick the light off, but I have to tell you that I think your problem is that the light was never on. You have a vision of the Australian economy that dates back to the 1960s. I could make a jibe about the fact that maybe that's because you come from South Australia, but I would never do that because I know Senator Birmingham and Senator Antic very well and I would never do that. You yourself referenced the activities of Mr Gupta and what's happening in South Australia, and I know there are remarkable things happening there in the manufacturing sector. I hear you may have a bit of a naval shipbuilding industry down there in South Australia. I would like you to come over to see the one in Western Australia, because I'm sure it is much, much better. But I will get to the one in South Australia at some point and have a look.

You are describing an Australia that digs up rocks and sends them overseas, which is an Australia that existed in the past but is not reflective of the mining industry today. In fact, the resources industry and the manufacturing and technology development associated with the resources industry are quite remarkable. I'll give you just one example from my home state of WA, in the area you talked about a lot, the lithium sector. I took Minister Canavan to meet the Simulus Group to see what they are doing. They are developing and implementing high-tech manufacturing apparatus for the lithium-mining sector, allowing much more of the processing of that mineral to be done onshore. This is groundbreaking new technology that has never been done before anywhere else and is now being done in Australia, for the benefit of the Australian economy and the mining sector. It is allowing us to capture that value into Australia.

We don't want to talk about mining. I, as a Western Australian, certainly would never talk down traditional mining or traditional manufacturing for that matter. The manufacturing sector has undergone a huge transition since the 1960s in Australia and right around the world. We are not orphans in this. The nature of manufacturing has changed. What we are seeing in Australia is a much more advanced, high-tech manufacturing industry, which, yes, does employ fewer people. But I would note that, according to the Australian Industry Group, manufacturing jobs actually grew by 3.2 per cent in the 12 months to February this year. Approximately 900,000 people are now employed in the manufacturing sector, and this rate of growth is expected to continue. We've seen an increase in the manufacturing sector, which shows that it's been stable or expanding for 32 consecutive months since August 2016.

The point I would make here is that it is about getting the economic fundamentals right. Manufacturing operates when it has stability and good economic fundamentals and when you've got the settings right on things like infrastructure spending, taxation rates and allowing manufacturing businesses to spend on R&D. That is what will fuel the future of advanced manufacturing in this country.

I want to return to the fact that we do have a world-class manufacturing sector. Again, I'll talk about my home state of Western Australia. Recently, Senator O'Sullivan and I visited a manufacturing engineering plant called Matrix, in Henderson in Western Australia. It is a part of the shipbuilding hub, but this company does not build ships or anything to do with ships. It actually builds components for the oil and gas sector—in particular, floats that effectively encase the drill pipes. Floats don't sound very high-tech, do they? But the technology that goes into the floats is quite remarkable. It's about producing hollow beads and then getting them in the right mix to get the exact buoyancy required to allow drilling to take place in thousands of metres of ocean depth. It's about the technology, the mathematics and the understanding that goes into developing and manufacturing these components and then sending them all around the world. These floatation devices are being used in the North Sea and other offshore drilling environments right around the world. I think that is a testament to Australia's ability to compete in the manufacturing sector, where we have good, strong competitive advantages.

We should not, in an economic sense, be picking winners. The government shouldn't be out there saying that we should be manufacturing X or Y or Z. That is only ever going to lead to disappointment and a weakening of the economy. What we should do is build on our strengths, and one of our key strengths is certainly in the mining and associated engineering and manufacturing sectors. We do a remarkable job in many of those areas. I visited drilling component makers in my home state of Western Australia. They are world-class, leading facilities that are building the components and the drill rigs that allow us to find the future natural resources that we will utilise over the next few generations.

Again, we shouldn't ever talk down mining. Mining makes a huge contribution to the wealth of this nation. It shouldn't ever be seen as a yesterday industry. It is an incredibly important part of our economy today and it will be a very, very important part of our economy going forward over the next generations. In fact, I think it is fair to describe it as the backbone of our national economy. To think about it in the way that the mining sector was thought about 20 or 30 years ago does a disservice to all of those great Australian men and women who are working in the mining sector and are utilising incredibly high-tech equipment and developing that equipment.

Woodside's advanced robotics facility in the middle of Perth, in Western Australia, is quite remarkable. It houses one of only eight robonauts—artificial humanoid robots—in the world, developed through the work of NASA. There is one on the International Space Station, seven in the United States of America and one in Perth—because Woodside have done such groundbreaking work in their remote operations. This is, in a very real sense, the science, technology and manufacturing of tomorrow.

We've seen remote equipment operations being pioneered in Western Australia which are now starting to make their way around the rest of the world, in an area which I think everyone in this place knows that I am very passionate about: agriculture. We've seen advances in Australia that are now being exported around the world. This is the manufacturing of tomorrow. It's the development of seeds and intellectual property that we can sell to our overseas markets.

Manufacturing has a proud record in Australia but it has a very, very proud future as well. It has a proud future by getting the economic fundamentals right, which is what this government has spent its time focused on.