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

I look forward to making some comments in relation to the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. In doing so, I think it would be remiss not to reflect on the fact that the government has had three years in power and they have no policies for growth, other than policies which propose to enact a centralised system of government handouts to businesses that are already doing the business themselves. When you think about the best way for us to manage this economy going forward, of course it is going to be for the market itself to fund and develop its own ideas.

The last time I looked, we weren't living in soviet Russia and we weren't living in an autocracy. In fact, up until recently, we had had almost three decades worth of growth because of fidelity to economic and market principles. But now we have a government which has done nothing other than run the country in favour of vested interests for three years. They have gummed up the works of small business with their endless ideological crusade created by the unions and foisted on the Australian people and small business by the Labor Party, which has led to it being harder than ever to run a small business in this country. The regulatory burden, the lack of imagination on the tax front and then the skyrocketing energy prices all mean that the country has anaemic growth and still has comparatively high inflation.

Then we come to this monster of a $22 billion handout to big business called Future Made in Australia. It is to the country's credit that we have institutions which are independent of the government of the day, where the people who are running those are able to give their own frank and fearless advice to ministers and to the public at large. The Chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, appointed by Mr Chalmers, said in relation to Future Made in Australia:

We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies and that can be very effective in coming back for more.

In other words, the government is creating a cavalcade of lobbyists coming to Canberra with their hand out to take taxpayer funds to pump into businesses which may be uncompetitive or to prop up something that they were going to do anyway. That is Future Made in Australia. I don't think I can do any better a job than quoting the Chair of the Productivity Commission, the government's own adviser on economic and productivity matters. Then, of course, we look at the former head of the Productivity Commission, Gary Banks, who said that Future Made in Australia was a 'fool's errand.' Mr Banks went on to say that it risks repeating that the mistakes of the past are propping up political favourites.

I think it is extraordinary, when you think about the history of this issue and, frankly, the great work that was done by the Hawke government in tearing down the tariff wall and ending the subsidisation of Australian industry, which was very hard to do. All the insiders and all the political dorks will give their opinions about who supported what in the eighties and nineties and how much bipartisanship there was, but there was bipartisanship in the eighties on the idea of reducing the tariff wall and ending subsidisation because it was recognised by people with brains that there were some things that Australia wasn't good at doing. There were some things that we were never going to be able to compete on, and, therefore, the government should not step into the shoes of industry and try to run these businesses for them and prop them up with taxpayers' hard earned money. That debate was won. What was the dividend? It was 30 years of growth.

So here we are seeing the government engaging in trampling upon the Hawke legacy. Maybe it is amnesia. My understanding was that the Treasurer had done a doctorate on Paul Keating. If he can still remember that doctorate, he will know that the Treasurer in the Hawke government was Paul Keating. Keating was, of course, an advocate for this approach because he understood the danger of maintaining the settlement which sustained, through government subsidy, uncompetitive businesses. That risked our prosperity then, and this risks our prosperity now by creating a class of businesses which are totally reliant on Canberra's teat. That is the risk with this scheme. I think that is why productivity commissioners past, present and maybe in the future—I don't know—have all taken the view that this is very bad. I commend Ms Wood for being brave enough to exercise her independence in that role and to criticise the Future Made in Australia policy.

There are a few examples in the current marketplace. Programs like Solar Sunshot, which apparently has not been supported by the Treasury secretary, has not proven its worth. Furthermore, Fortescue, which is proposing to engage in some green hydrogen initiatives, has decided that it will cut back what it was proposing to do even though this policy has been announced. That is the overall charge against this policy.

In Labor's agenda here, one thing that is never far from the surface is a desire to lock in some dollars for their good friends in the trade union movement. They have done this, on this occasion, through the community benefit principles. These were the subject of the Senate economics committee's review of not just the principal legislation but also the legislation that the Senate is now considering in relation to tax credits. The AMWU provided evidence to the initial Senate inquiry, and in relation to the community benefit principles they said:

We at the AMWU want well-paid, safe, secure jobs, and that's why the jobs from this should have union agreements; they should be unionised.

That was their opinion, and that is exactly what this government is delivering in the form of the community benefit principles. They are proposing that, if there are to be contracts issued under the Future Made in Australia arrangements, they must have union agreements. This is going to be a very ugly moment for the country because, if this is passed by this parliament and a future made in Australia becomes law, then the agreements to give away taxpayer funds to uncompetitive businesses will have, as a condition, a requirement to have a union agreement which saps productivity and ultimately sees what we've been able to have exposed by the Nine newspapers through their building inquiries.

The construction industry has a 20 or 30 per cent tax on it imposed by the CFMEU. The productivity drain is there because the union is doing business for itself, not the public interest, and that has certainly had a massive effect on the cost of apartment construction around Australia. What you will see is the CFMEU tax effect applied wherever you see 'Future Made in Australia' appear. It could be anywhere, in any business. Then you'll start to see the Argentinian disease. You'll start to see vested interests infect and entrap the country's economy through this locking in of largesse and vested interests, where they have their grubby mitts in every single transaction. Who's paying? It's the taxpayer. The taxpayer would have to pay for this. In the end, the taxpayer would end up paying for the largesse locked into the legislation.

I thought the Minerals Council made a very interesting comment when they came to the secondary inquiry. They made the point that, at the end of the day, they're already meeting a lot of the standards that you see in the legislation and that there'd be duplication through the community benefit principles. I thought there was also some interesting testimony from the Clean Energy Council. Ms Anna Freeman made the following point:

We also remain concerned about the potential duplication of process created by the community benefit principles.

This is the Clean Energy Council; they have the same view as the Minerals Council and the Business Council. All the business groups have a concern about these community benefit principles. Some of them, fairly, have a concern that they are woolly; others share my concern, which is that you're going to see a CFMEU-isation of the broader economy and the locking in of this largesse.

As I said at the opening, none of this should be surprising. The major problem the Australian people have is that they have had a government for three years which has spent its time lining the pockets of its blood-sucking mates in the unions, the super funds and the class-action law firms. They haven't had time to solve the real economic problems facing the Australian people, which is why they've failed on inflation and housing. They are a government for vested interests. When they get out of bed every day, they think about the 10 things they can do for the people who run their preselections, fund their campaigns, talk to them every day and write their policies. That is the problem the Australian people have. That is why we're not on track in this country, because when you run the country for the favour of a few bloodsuckers, you actually do run the show into the ground. That is where we are right now in this country.

The Future Made in Australia bill is wonderfully consistent with the past three years of this government's agenda. If you look at anything to do with industrial relations, superannuation or the broader economy, Future Made in Australia is more largesse for unions. But, as I said before, I would encourage Mr Chalmers or Dr Chalmers—whatever he calls himself—to have a read of his doctoral thesis on Mr Keating. In that, he will find that Mr Keating was the Treasurer in the Hawke government which pulled down the tariff wall and ended the subsidisation of Australian industry for the better. I would encourage him to read that. If he's able to rediscover the old dusty thesis, or whatever it was, he will learn a valuable lesson. This is the road to ruin. Not only will it pave the Barton and Federal highways with gold from all the lobbyists and bloodsuckers; it will also establish a massive sovereign risk here. Future ministers and bureaucrats are going to have to work out how to dish all this cash out—billions and millions of dollars every single year.

I think this is a bad idea, and I think if the government can set aside all the politics and reflect on what it has learnt in the past couple of years, it may have learnt that it's not a good idea to establish these big funds. Firstly, with the reconstruction fund, no-one knows what we're reconstructing from. That is sitting on tens of billions of dollars and hasn't done anything. Then we've got the housing fund, which spends more money on executive salaries than it does on housing. The government is building vastly fewer houses than were achieved under the past government. Bureaucracies do not build houses. Bureaucracies do not reconstruct from wars, or whatever we've had. I'm not sure why we're having a reconstruction. This will be the same thing.

I think that in the end they will regret this plan, because it is fraught with risk, and it fails to learn the lessons of Australia's recent history. Australia will grow if there is a fair dinkum approach to supporting businesses that can stand on their own two feet. Small business, medium business, big business—who cares?—will prosper with clearer taxes, lower taxes and fewer regulations. That is going to be the path to prosperity. The idea of subsidising bad ideas and bad businesses with taxpayer funds and simultaneously allowing them to be funnelled away to the unions, the CFMEU and all the other old mates, is the road to ruin. It is a road to turning Australia into Argentina. That is why we are voting against these bills. I say, for the record, that I think Argentinians are wonderful people.