Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful for the opportunity to make some comments in relation to the Future Made in Australia legislation. In doing so, I want to reflect on where the country has been over these last few decades and pay credit to the Labor Party for, in the 1980s, helping the country bring down the tariff wall—remove subsidisation of industry. Sometimes these measures were supported by the Liberal Party. Not all the deregulation and other economy related measures that were required to build a robust, modern economy were supported. But in general terms, I think in the long run of history will look back at that period as a period when tough judgements were made by that government, the Hawke government. And I think most reasonable people would say it was a government that did things that others could have done but didn't do when they were given the opportunity.

These measures in relation to a Future Made in Australia are winding back the clock 40 years, maybe—maybe more—to a period when the government thought it knew better than the market did, that it could swim against the tide of global capital, that people in Canberra were so smart and so intelligent that they would just run the show from here. That is a very scary position for the country to be in, but it is perhaps not surprising. This has been a regressive parliament. I have been shocked that I've been part of parliament that wound back a tax reform of the last parliament. In this parliament the government reimposed a tax bracket that had been removed by the last parliament. And now we have a government that is seeking to establish a picking-winners approach here in Canberra, where big businesses—it could be foreign or domestic businesses—will be funded by the Commonwealth government.

That is an approach that has been discredited. You can go back to the 1970s and look at all the different debates that were had, by Bert Kelly and others. These issues were ventilated for decades before the Hawke government finally put the tariff wall and subsidisation to death—to their eternal credit. Now we are back in around 1975. We've got another Treasurer, another doctor Treasurer—like Jim Cairns—who thinks he can fund the economy as a venture capitalist. It's been a very regressive period.

So, I would say that the central charge against this government is that it has been so focused on what is important to its favourite fellow travellers—the unions, the super funds and co—that it has had no time to resolve the major economic challenges of the day. That is why people under 40 are going crazy about housing, why the Australian dream is further and further away the longer the Labor government is in office, and why the inflation problem is getting worse here compared with almost any other jurisdiction we would care to compare ourselves with. And that is the problem: the government has been so focused on the rent seekers and the bloodsuckers that it has had no time to resolve the major challenges of the day. And this bill is a continuation of this problem—that the government is trying to feather the nests of its favourite people.

We did an inquiry into this bill through the Economics Legislation Committee. One of the major issues that came up in the inquiry was that the provisions of the bill provide for a form of compulsory unionisation, where grants or payments are made by these funds. In fact, when asked about the so-called community benefit principles, the AMWU said that firms receiving finance grants or equity investment in their firm should be required to have an enterprise agreement with the relevant trade unions registered or enter the relevant multi-employer bargaining stream. This whole business is all about our old mate here saying, 'How can we help the people that are closest to us?' It's not: 'How can we solve problems for the Australian people? How can we solve inflation? How can we help small business? How can we deal with housing?' No; it's: 'How can we give money to our best friends? How can we help the unions?' This is unfortunate.

If I were advising the government, I would not have come into this parliament when it started back in the middle of 2022 and abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission. I don't think that was a very good decision. I know that Senator Watt now is having to deal with that mess, and we all wish him well. But I'm not sure it was a great judgement call for the government. Sure, the longer the governments go, the more they perhaps incur integrity issues when they make bad judgements, but this is another bad judgement of trying to entrench their favourite people into this new scheme.

The Minerals Council of Australia said that the workplace relations elements of the community benefit principles in section 10, paragraph (3) (a) (i) of the bill are unnecessary and would be economically damaging. The Minerals Council go on to say the principles are not about improving working conditions but are a government-mandated attempt at union control of policy, judgements and workplaces. The other issue here is that this will entrench permanent rent-seeking through the picking of winners. The Productivity Commission itself said that industry policy such as Future Made in Australia 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.

This takes me back to my central charge that we're going back in time some 40 or 50 years with this approach. The Chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, has described the policy as risking 'forever subsidies'. She says that we risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and it can be a very effective way of getting them to come back for more. The Productivity Commission is saying what it has always said: this idea of subsidising industry is very dangerous for the economy. I guess they must regret that we are now back in the 1970s and having the same lengthy debates that were won then.

The former chair of the Productivity Commission, Gary Banks, has said that the Future Made in Australia is a fool's errand which risks making the mistakes of the past by propping up so-called political favourites. He was described as a flat-earther by the Prime Minister. Apparently, if you're an economist setting out that there are orthodox things that have been determined over many decades, such as the risk of government subsidising industry forever, you're now a flat-earther. I wonder whether there is a point when government thinks, 'Maybe we actually should try and focus on what will be good for the people of Australia rather than just people who are close to us.' That is really the major issue with Future Made in Australia. It's all about entrenching union control over workplaces, as set out in these community benefit principles.

We had the ACTU come to the hearings. I was able to ask Ms O'Neil, the President of the ACTU, about these community benefit principles. She gave—I would have to say—an answer which was very unclear. We then asked the AMWU and AWU what their views were, and they gave a very clear answer, saying they thought it was very important that any organisation that wanted to receive these funds, grants or subsidies should have a mandatory unionisation policy. At least they were honest. I went on to congratulate the AWU for being honest, because at least they were saying what this is all about. It's all about entrenching control amongst a small group of people.

That is before you even consider the idea of crony capitalism. I would say this is about crony unionisation. The industry minister, Ed Husic, thinks he's going to be a venture capitalist. He will go around and invest in a whole lot of different businesses in Australia and, obviously, abroad. We've seen the billion-dollar bet he's made on PsiQuantum, which is not an Australian company. He will do that. In the process of doing so, he is going to commit our taxpayer funds in circumstances where there must be a union involved. So this is going to be another opportunity to enrich their favourite vested interests. Ultimately, all their chickens will come home to roost, because, after 2½ long years of Labor, the Australian people will be wise to their economic circumstances being much poorer than they were back in May 2022. Regrettably, I've got to say that issues like housing for the under-40s are going to get worse before they get better if this government were to stay in office.

I think people generally want their governments to do well, but they will be very sceptical of efforts to give special deals and handouts to a select few union czars, which is what we've seen out of this government. It was only last week that we discovered that the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, had decided that he would use his position to file a false public interest immunity claim here in the Senate, when the Senate had sought an order for the production of documents to get access to files that were provided by one of his favourite vested interests, the Cbus super fund, which is chaired by his former boss, Mr Wayne Swan, who is also the president of the Labor Party. The story gets better and better, doesn't it? Doctor Chalmers used his position to file a false public interest immunity claim to stop the Senate getting access to the document.

We are lucky that as citizens we have access to freedom of information laws, because, under the FOI laws, we can appeal a judgement. We were able to appeal to the Information Commissioner who provided us with the document that Dr Chalmers had sought to cover up. The document was an effort to lobby by the Cbus super fund to get a special deal so that it could cover up its stamp duty costs from members. It wanted to conceal transparent information from members. Why would the Treasurer use his position to conceal this information from the Australian people? The answer is that it is a government for vested interests, and they were embarrassed about this idea of being exposed. It shows it is completely on brand—that when you get out of bed, you think about the 10 things you could do for your best friends today and how you can use your public office to help your best friends, not the Australian people.

The consequence of all these funds that Labor have set up will be bad for the Australian people, because the off-balance-sheet items of the reconstruction fund, the housing fund and all the other funds they've set up will all be disastrous legacies for the Australian people. They will also have a very dangerous legacy for the government in the short term, because, ultimately, when you stack up these funds and put all your mates onto their boards and they end up doing dodgy things, it becomes an integrity issue. So it is a very good lesson for future governments of what not to do. You would not come into government and spend all your time and capital establishing these off-balance-sheet items, which then go away and make these judgements, and put your mates onto the boards. It's very dangerous because it will only highlight more and more integrity issues like the one we've been discussing this morning to do with Mr Swan and Mr Chalmers.

Ultimately, the parliament may enact a form of this Future Made in Australia bill. If it does, it will entrench a funding source which will be available for rent seekers, and, as the committee process showed, everyone wants to get access to these monies—the chocolate makers, the dog companies, the caravan companies, the desk companies, the lampshade companies, the flag makers and the camera makers. Everyone with a business in Australia applied to this committee to get access to these funds. To be honest with you, I understand this, but that highlights how dangerous this idea is. It will open the door to the rent seekers.

You won't be able to drive from Sydney to Canberra anymore because it will be logjammed with people trying to come from Sydney. I imagine the Barton Highway will be clogged up with people coming from Melbourne to put their hand out to get some taxpayer funds. I guess they are acting rationally, but this is a very dangerous idea that people in Canberra will dish out funds to their mates. But I again caution the government. These ideas may be attractive to them as a way of helping them with and paying off their favourite vested interests, but I believe that they only expose the government to more integrity risks, because, ultimately, the funds will be spent poorly or badly or there'll be cover-ups.