Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very, very proud to stand here in the Senate today and speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. Manufacturing, the making of things, here in Australia is an incredibly important industry for Queensland, particularly for regional Queensland, and I know that we have a really important choice to make in this country and in this chamber. We can choose a future made here in Australia, we can choose a future economy that transitions to net zero, we can choose a future economy that has more local and regional jobs or, as those opposite are choosing, we can vote down this legislation and say no to more manufacturing jobs, no to more local jobs and no to making more things here in Australia. That is the very clear choice that we have.

Manufacturing is incredibly important not only to me personally but also to the community that I call home. I'm the daughter of a manufacturing worker and I'm very proud of that legacy. When I hear people like Senator Bragg call manufacturing workers 'rent seekers', it really goes to show the respect that those opposite refuse to give to people who have worked hard their whole lives to make things here in Australia and to make more local jobs for more regional communities. I want to stand here and separate myself from those types of comments because I think that manufacturing workers are wonderful people. They work incredibly hard and they support our regional communities.

Manufacturing is incredibly important for Cairns, the community I call home. We have a thriving defence and marine manufacturing industry. Many people would see Cairns and think that it's a tourism town—and, of course, we're very proud of our reef tourism—but under this government we are developing an incredibly strong, industrial base in Cairns. Through the support of the Cairns Marine Precinct we will have more defence manufacturing and more marine manufacturing right there in Cairns. That's what this is all about. It's about supporting regional communities. It's about diversifying those regional communities so they have more local jobs to rely on when we go through things like the COVID pandemic, which meant that our tourism industry had to be put on hold. Our communities throughout regional Queensland rely on manufacturing, whether it's rail manufacturing or sugar manufacturing. These are good jobs, and they're secure jobs because they are on unionised worksites. That's a good thing, because these people are paid good wages. They have good, secure jobs and they support their local community.

What this bill does is set in place a plan for this country to make more things here at home. We need to bring manufacturing back home to Australia, and we need to bring manufacturing back home to regional Australia. When we had nine years of a Liberal-National government, we saw manufacturing slide and we became more dependent on economies outside of Australia. When COVID hit, we were one of the lowest for sustainability and self-sufficiency in the OECD. We want to increase that. We want to build back up again, and we want to do that as a renewable energy superpower, because we know that that is what the world is looking for from us. We have the opportunity, the capacity, the skills, the workers and the knowledge. In a regional town like Cairns, we deserve an opportunity to compete with the rest of the world, and that's what this bill does. That's why we're supporting a future made or Australia.

It's extraordinary that the LNP voted against this bill in the House. It's extraordinary that the LNP will vote against this bill in the Senate. Shame on them for not supporting manufacturing workers. The Labor Party will always back making more things here in Australia. We support manufacturing and manufacturing workers because we know that they deliver good, secure jobs and that they will continue to do that into the future if given the right supports. It's an incredibly important bill and I look forward to continuing my remarks.

Debate interrupted.