Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, which is yet another attempt by the Albanese Labor government to force through their agenda on net zero but which will do very little to support manufacturing businesses in this country. As we saw here in this chamber recently, the Labor government will stop at nothing in its pursuit of its ideological agenda to reach net zero. This government, along with the Greens, rammed through the net zero bills without consultation and without debate.

Under Labor it is becoming increasingly common for these matters, many of which are controversial, to be pushed through by guillotine, without giving coalition senators the opportunity to debate them and to put on record our opposition or otherwise. This undermines the very reason we're in the Senate—to review and strengthen legislation, not to push through bills into law at the whim of Labor and their allies the Greens. The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 is of the same nature, so I am grateful, perhaps fortunate, that I am actually able to share my views and the reasons why I will not be supporting it.

If you took this bill at face value, you would think that it is about manufacturing, that it is about making things in Australia again. While, yes, technically this is true, it's only about making certain things. This bill is solely about setting up an ideological economy, which they have dubbed the 'global net zero economy', and giving authoritative powers to the Treasurer, the same Treasurer who has overseen an economy that has delivered stubbornly high home-grown inflation, a higher cost of living and of course a higher cost of doing business. These higher costs have forced many businesses, including those who this bill purports to support, to pass on those costs to consumers.

Since the Albanese Labor government came to office, we have witnessed the most significant growth in insolvencies nationally across all industries: construction, hospitality, manufacturing—you name it. They're all hurting, with around 19,000 businesses having entered insolvency since Labor took office. They are hurting from the increased costs of their energy bills, the red tape that locks them out of key export markets and the legislative requirements that change their working conditions so that they can no longer communicate with their staff the way they used to.

Businesses are the engine room of our economy, and they are no strangers to finding innovative solutions to the problems we face as a nation. As my colleague in the House, the member for Braddon, Gavin Pearce MP, put it:

It's government's responsibility to put into place the policy settings that are necessary to achieve the step away from this energy dependence and let businesses do what they know best. It's not government's job to pick winners. It's not government's job to invest taxpayer money or to prop up uncompetitive businesses in the hope that sometime in the future they might be able to hold their own on the international commodity market.

I could not agree more with my colleague. Instead of supporting the innovation we see so often in the manufacturing sector, what this bill does is establish a national interest framework as the means of identifying sectors as potential candidates for public investment under the Future Made in Australia. Notably, though, there's only a passing mention of the new front door for clean-energy financing, and I understand that to be the role of the Net Zero Economy Authority, whose establishing legislation, as I alluded to earlier, was rammed through the Senate on the last day of the August sitting fortnight.

It does, however, expand the function of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, to enable it to administer support to industries under the Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund and other programs. This is duplication and will create unnecessary confusion for the sector. The omnibus bill commits over $6.1 billion to ARENA between the 2025 and the 2039 financial years, with a potential for further funding of up to $3.9 billion annually. This could potentially support large-scale renewable energy projects with limited parliamentary oversight, especially during election years. This is particularly concerning considering that many of our regional communities, including some in my home state of Tasmania, are feeling they're being left behind and forced to accept large-scale renewable energy projects in their towns without consultation and social licence. It is also the typical top-down approach which we see so often from Labor.

This bill does not incentivise manufacturing businesses, nor does it create the economic conditions in which they can thrive. Instead it gives the power to the Treasurer to pick the winners. It will use taxpayer funds to allow businesses whom they deem to be aligned with their net zero goals to be subsidised, but only if they manufacture things like solar panels and wind turbine blades. But, in a blatant demonstration of Labor's agenda, Treasury has confirmed that gas, blue hydrogen, carbon capture and nuclear will not be considered under the National Interest Framework despite all aligning with net zero.

My home state of Tasmania punches considerably above its weight when it comes to advanced manufacturing and entrepreneurial spirit. There are companies like the Elphinstone Group, who successfully bid and won a tender to be part of the multibillion-dollar Land 400 phase 3 program to supply infantry fighting vehicles for the Australian Army; and Haywards, a steel fabrication business at Westbury which has helped to supply steel products for infrastructure projects in Tasmania, like the Launceston General Hospital helipad airbridge.

Tasmania has a vibrant history of entrepreneurial pursuit, and it has always done things differently when supported to do so by policymakers and economic conditions. An example is Sea Forest, at Triabunna, an internationally recognised company which has developed a special type of seaweed called Asparagopsis, which can be fed to cattle to reduce methane emissions. The seaweed reacts with enzymes in the stomachs of livestock and stops the production of methane. Since their launch, Sea Forest have reduced methane emissions to the equivalent of taking 10 million cars off the road. With their product, they are feeding 40,000 head of cattle in Tasmania and around the country. Sea Forest recently signed an agreement with a UK based supermarket to provides its products and is seeking to upgrade its plant, at Swansea in Tasmania, recently receiving $4 million from the Tasmanian Liberal government to develop a trial to investigate the large-scale viability of its products. This is an innovative solution developed by the private sector, and these types of solutions are the ones we will need in our transition to net zero.

Unfortunately, this bill places more weight on the manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines than on innovative solutions like those of Sea Forest. The Bills Digest states the purpose of the bill:

Future Made in Australia links challenges of climate change and national economic capability to reindustrialisation, predominantly using Australia's world-significant clean energy and critical minerals to increase onshore secondary processing of these metals and the manufacture of products and components required for decarbonisation and greater sovereignty.

What this will do is create a two-speed economy, where those in the manufacturing of wind turbines, batteries and solar panels will be able to receive funding at the expense of those like Sea Forest. In the end, that will create an environment that stifles innovation at the expense of manufacturing goods and lead us down a one-size-fits-all path in our pursuit of net zero.

Once again, Labor wants to put all its eggs in the wind and solar basket, and this bill has become a vehicle to allow corporate companies to take advantage of that and receive taxpayer funded subsidies at the expense of innovative solutions inspired by the private sector. Why should some manufacturers receive government funding to support the production of goods and others who produce innovative solutions not receive the same support? This is disappointing and demoralising for those not eligible for assistance and will no doubt result in further insolvencies in the future at the hands of this tunnel-vision government. We cannot rely solely on wind and solar to get us to net zero. We also cannot rely on wind and solar manufacturing to help us get there. Manufacturing has historically played an important role in Australia's economy, and it can again, but this bill is not the way to do it.

If you take this bill at face value, Future Made in Australia sounds like a suite of measures to bring manufacturing back to this country. And if you were to listen to the Prime Minister, that is what you would think it was all about. Indeed, if you look at the 'Build it Here' petition on Labor's website, you see that it talks about Australia's weak industrial capacity and mentions the exit of the car-manufacturing business from Australia. You would be inclined to think that this bill purported to support all manufacturers, not just the select few deemed worthy of investment. This bill's focus on a global net zero economy narrows its focus so much that it could conflict with the traditional powerhouses of our economy like agriculture, tourism and resources. These three industries are incredibly important to my home state of Tasmania, which is yet another reason why I cannot support this bill.

Several weeks ago, we heard the news that Saputo Dairy had made the decision to close the King Island Dairy, one of our state's most historic factories, which has manufactured award-winning cheeses and other products for over 120 years. Tasmania has many award-winning food products—in fact, a lot of our manufacturing is of food—but this bill does not support them. It also doesn't support advanced manufacturers like Definium Technologies, which is based in Launceston. Definium manufactures dozens of internet-of-things devices, including Ethernet devices and satellites. These items are being produced at scale in my home state of Tasmania and shipped across the world. From supporting mining accommodation in outback Australia to creating fuel injection systems for taxis in Las Vegas, they solve real-world problems with technology. In fact, the Definium Technologies were also commissioned during the height of the pandemic to produce an integral component for ventilators for Victorians suffering from COVID-19.

These are all valuable manufacturing businesses that produce important products for our economy. But will any of these organisations be supported by Future Made in Australia? No. They won't be, because they are not the types of manufacturing this government wants to support. They are not part of the global net zero economy. Like many pieces of legislation brought to the Senate by the Albanese Labor government, the devil is always in the detail. This bill does not support broader manufacturing businesses and does not, as they claim, put Australia back on the path to being an industrial manufacturer. Rather, it sets an agenda to allow taxpayer funds to be used to subsidise companies that manufacture products used in the transition to net zero. Manufacturing businesses in Australia are hurting right now. But this government wants to support manufacturers in an economic industry that doesn't really even exist here in Australia.

As my colleague Dan Tehan, the member for Wannon, said in his second reading speech:

Does this bill make our manufacturing businesses more competitive? Does it help them address the cost-of-doing-business crisis? Does it mean that the cost-of-living crisis will be addressed because the cost of doing business will be addressed?

Obviously, the answer to all those questions is no, which is why I am joining with my coalition colleagues in opposing this bill.