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

I too rise to talk on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. Again, we have an Orwellianly named bill from this Labor government, although attributing it to George Orwell is probably incorrect. We should probably give it to those fine creatives at Working Dog Productions because it's much more like The Hollowmen, isn't it? 'Future Made in Australia'—this was a slogan thought up out of focus groups that the Labor government then hunted around to attach a policy to. How can we know that? Because the very first project announced under this Future Made in Australia approach was to an American company. For goodness sake, you couldn't put it in a Working Dog script. You couldn't put it in a Hollowmen script. It would be laughed out of town as a comedy. But that's what this government serves up. This government serves up legislation that would be better in an ABC comedy than used for the future growth of the Australian economy, because this is a highly interventionist model.

The previous speaker, Senator Walsh, belled the cat when she referred to the car industry. Every Australian should remember—and, sadly, I am old enough to remember—that what killed the car industry in this country was the Button car plan.