Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was speaking on this legislation yesterday evening, I was reflecting on the native forest logging industry—how it does not have a social licence and how it is a massive carbon bomb that is playing a large role in driving climate change and the breakdown of our climate, which in turn is, tragically, turning our planet into a place where future generations will find it impossible to enjoy the same levels of prosperity that we do today and who may, even yet, end up inheriting an uninhabitable planet because of the greed and the psychopathy of current generations, particularly those who represent the major parties in this place.

I want to make a few points about the native forest logging industry, particularly in Tasmania, and this is relevant in terms of the amendments that the Greens have secured to this legislation. Recently, thanks to the Bob Brown Foundation, we've seen the most distressing photos of a juvenile Tasmanian devil that was crisped—burned to death, dying in agony—in a logging burn in Tasmania. This one devil is symbolic of the millions of mammals that have been slaughtered by the native forest logging industry, either by being burned alive and dying the most agonising death or by being deliberately poisoned and dying the most agonising death. It is time the industry was held to account for this utter, abject animal cruelty—and that's just the mammals, let alone the insects and other invertebrates that are just destroyed in massive numbers by this industry. It is a biodiversity harvester. It is trashing Tasmania's biodiversity, not to mention trashing our clean air, not to mention trashing our beautiful landscapes, not to mention poisoning our beautiful rivers and waterways, not to mention poisoning our estuary systems, not to mention the massive amount of carbon it emits into the atmosphere. It's time to end native forest logging. It no longer has a social licence, and it is a mendicant industry that costs the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars a year even in my home state of Tasmania.

I'll give you a tip, colleagues: if you pulled the public subsidies out of the native forest logging industry it would be gone overnight, because it cannot survive without massive public subsidies—money that should be going into making sure everyone has a home, making sure we've got a health system that can properly look after people and a public education system where schools don't have to sell lamingtons to buy textbooks. Those are the things that that money should be going into, not propping up an environmentally destructive industry of climate criminals who have once again got their hands out for tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

The Greens have secured, as I said, an amendment that ensures coal, gas and native forest logging are prohibited investments under this legislation. It's worth pointing out that this is the same amendment put in place by the Greens for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This is the same amendment put in place by the Greens for ARENA. Those amendments prevented the CEFC and ARENA from being used as slush funds for coal and gas by the coalition government that we have now, thankfully, seen the back of.

The amendments negotiated to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill by the Greens ensure that the NRF will be focused on the task of rebuilding a genuine manufacturing base, not propping up coal and gas corporations and native forest logging. That is critical because the Greens want the moneys appropriated for the National Reconstruction Fund to be used to accelerate the transition in Australia away from coal, gas and native forest logging—those environmentally destructive industries that are contributing so massively to climate change.

We want to see these funds used to drive the transition away from those industries into the industries of the future, into industries that can help us become a world leader in transitioning to a net zero emissions society; that's what we need to be. Of course, there will be opportunities for those countries and jurisdictions around the world that can lead that transition, and we genuinely want the funds used in this legislation to drive and to accelerate that transition. We've also secured an amendment in this legislation that would mean that investments made by the National Reconstruction Fund board must align with legislated climate targets and any future updated commitment by Australia under the Paris Agreement.

Interestingly, the Greens took a policy to the last election to create a $15 billion Made in Australia Bank and manufacturing fund. Because of the amendments we have secured to this legislation, the National Reconstruction Fund reflects most of the core spirit of the Greens' Made in Australia Bank. I want to be very clear: the Made in Australia Bank was planned, with one of its primary tasks being to decarbonise Australia's existing manufacturing base. The amendments we have secured to the National Reconstruction Fund legislation will assist in achieving that aim.

Something that not a lot of people know is that, currently, Australia ranks 91st in the world for economic complexity. That's because, over the years and decades, we've traded off a self-reliant manufacturing base for an economy that is, to far too great a degree, reliant on the extraction and export of fossil fuels. You can see that in the gas industry today. The gas cabal in this country are effectively given the resource for next to nothing. They emit large amounts of climate-destroying carbon and methane and other greenhouse gases as they extract and convert the gas for transport. Then the overwhelming majority of the gas ends up exported to other countries around the world, while the gas price remains stubbornly high in this country, contributing to the cost-of-living crisis faced by so many Australians.

Because we are ranked so low for economic complexity and because the fossil fuel cabal owns the major parties in this place, through the institutionalised bribery of political donations, we are far too deeply reliant on a globally integrated open market economy, and therefore shocks abroad reverberate to far too great a degree throughout the Australian economy. We can see that today, as we have just gone through 10 consecutive interest rate rises in a row by an out-of-control Reserve Bank and a government that is pretending that it's all too difficult and it can't itself do anything to address inflation, which is of course an absolute load of neoliberal rubbish. By the way, it has never happened before in Australia's history that the RBA has raised interest rates at 10 consecutive board meetings.

What we are seeing is real wages decreasing at the fastest rate on record in Australia. Inflation is up, and we are overexposed to global supply shocks because of the factors I mentioned earlier. That means that, along with those global supply shocks that we are overexposed to—many of which are climate related, many of which are pandemic related, many of which, such as the war in Ukraine, are geopolitics related—plus this government's refusal to rein in the rampant profiteering that is going on from big corporations at the moment, who are using the cover of the global supply shocks to put up their prices higher than they otherwise would be able to, what we are seeing is an inflation spike. Then we get the Reserve Bank coming in and raising interest rates, putting massive strain on mortgage holders and renters, because this government is just putting the whole problem in the too-hard basket.

Well, here is a little shopping list of what this government could do. Firstly, they could put in place a corporate superprofits tax that would disincentivise corporations from price-gouging. Then they could remove the stage 3 tax cuts from the top end, walk away from the $368 billion of nuclear submarines that we don't need and that will actually make this country a more dangerous place to live, and they could use those savings to invest in programs that would actually help people with the cost-of-living crisis in a non-inflationary way—for example, put dental and mental health into Medicare. There would be no inflationary impact, but it would actually do something meaningful to help people, families with kids, struggling with the cost of living. They could make child care free. They could build more affordable homes so more people would have a home. This government has been very happy to intervene in the gas price, but it's stubbornly refusing to intervene in the rental crisis. It could do something to freeze rents. These are all Australian Greens policies, I might add. Finally, they need to raise income support, because people on JobSeeker are literally starving, and poverty is a political choice being made by the Labor Party.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023. One Nation is not inclined to support this legislation, but as usual we're going to try and make it better. I remind the Senate that this is why we are here—to improve legislation, not to rubber-stamp the green left political agenda. One Nation will be moving amendments to the bill. Our first amendment will attempt to put some substance behind the phrase 'Australia is the clever country'. This nation has produced world-leading scientists, engineers and inventors who have contributed a great deal to the body of human knowledge. But all too often clever Australians are forced to take their great ideas overseas to be commercialised and this intellectual property is lost to our nation. A recent example of this was a non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Queensland. It was refused a patent, and the TGA refused to approve it. Australia was left to import vaccines from overseas pharmaceutical companies.

A more famous example is the invention of wi-fi. The alliance which owns the trademark is not based in Australia but in the United States. While the CSIRO was eventually compensated to some extent, those making real profits from this piece of Australian technology are foreign companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Intel and Sony.

The government says this bill will make it easier for industry to commercialise innovation and technology, supporting the development of our national sovereign capabilities. One Nation's amendment seeks to absolutely guarantee this by ensuring that the commercialisation of Australian intellectual property, for the benefit of Australia, is included within the investment parameters of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, within the definition of 'constitutionally-supported activities'. A subsequent amendment will also loosen up the risk management guideline.

Innovation, ideas and extracting some reward from their success often require taking risks. Clever Australians often risk a great deal of their own money and reputation to bring their ideas to commercial realisation. At the very least the government should help them shoulder some of the risk if there's a good chance their innovation can benefit the Australian people.

One of these inventions was brought to my attention in about 2017 or 2018. A lot of Australians would be shocked to know that both the Liberal and Labor governments—and I personally spoke to two former Liberal MPs and PM Anthony Albanese—canned an asbestos eradication plant that I brought to them in 2017. The coalition government put aside $80 million in the budget. This went through a process. After going before six ministers, who dragged their knuckles, nothing happened with regard to this. It would have been the first plant in the world that would have dealt with 100 tonnes per day of deadly asbestos fibres, instead of burying them. Instead, every state and territory is leaving a deadly legacy for future generations to deal with. With a few minor changes the same plant could also deal with low-grade nuclear—that's, hospital waste—and solar panels. We have not discussed how hundreds of millions of panels are going to be dealt with, other than burying them, which has the potential to poison our waterways.

This is what they've turned their back on. They talk about innovation and the Reconstruction Fund, yet no-one was interested in taking up this technology, which would have actually got rid of asbestos, nuclear waste and solar panels. You're all pushing for solar panels, but no-one has told me how you intend to get rid of the solar panels, apart from burying them in the ground. You've lost this opportunity. It's still there, if you've got the determination to do something about it. But our Prime Minister wasn't interested.

Our second amendment once again seeks to ensure that it is Australians who benefit from the extraction of our natural resources. This is because Labor has once again caved in to the green Left extremists and ruled out investment in gas and coal projects by corporations, despite Australia's desperate shortage of affordable and reliable energy. This is despite Labor's promise to reduce household energy bills by $275 a year—a promise they obviously never intended to keep.

Our amendment will ensure that the ban placed on the corporation investing in the construction of pipeline infrastructure for the extraction of natural gas will not limit investment in pipelines for the transport of natural gas to Australian households and businesses. Australia has some of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world, yet we receive very little in return for their exploitation by mostly foreign-owned multinationals, which pay little to no tax in Australia. This is another issue I have raised with the former coalition and Prime Minister Albanese.

We in Australia export $91 billion worth of gas, and 93 per cent comes from the North West Shelf and seven per cent from the east coast of Australia. Of that $77 billion off the North West Shelf we get about $300 million in taxes because the Labor Party thought it was a great idea to increase the PRRT. On an investment they have a 15 per cent uplift factor. If they put $100 million a year in exploration, they get $115 million in tax credits, which accumulates every year. So your big companies—Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell—have accumulated about $400 billion worth of tax credits, so we're not getting anything out of the North West Shelf.

All these resources belong to the Australian people, and you're not chasing that. You're chasing your tail. You want to get rid of personal tax cuts for Australians, which they need and highly deserve, but you're not prepared to go after the multinationals, get rid of the PRRT and make them pay for the resources that belong to all Australians.

You allowed the Western Australian government to do another 25-year deal so that they get their gas at cost price. Premier McGowan has said: 'It's our gas. We're not going to send pipelines to the east coast to supply the rest of Australia.' That is what is actually happening. Yet nothing is done about it. No-one is interested. That gas does not belong to the Western Australian people. It is in our Australian waters and it belongs to every Australian.

We heard both the former prime minister and the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, say, 'We're going to get multinationals to pay their fair share of tax.' I'm yet to see any of this. I'd like to see where this bill is going to go. If you're going to give handouts, is it going to be to multinational companies again, who don't pay their fair share of tax in Australia? That in itself is going to be very interesting too.

These things are very important to me. One Nation will continue to advocate for a transcontinental pipeline to bring gas from the North West Shelf to eastern Australia. It has to happen. If you don't do that, then we must transport it by ship, which would probably be a lot easier and cheaper than putting the pipeline in, but we have to look at it. We have a couple of hundred years, if not more, of gas that we can use to drive this nation and give cheap power to the Australian people.

It's an inescapable fact that, as more unreliable and costly renewables come online, more gas is needed to firm this intermittent supply. Green Left extremists either don't understand this or deliberately refuse to acknowledge it. One Nation will continue to advocate for our energy resources to benefit Australia and Australians first. We seek tax reform that ensures Australians get a fair return for our natural resources, as I stated. This government is going to need a way to meet the $368 billion cost for AUKUS. Properly taxing foreign-owned multinationals would be an excellent place to start.

I have a concern about this National Reconstruction Fund. If it's going to be set up by the minister and they are hand-picking who is on the board, who is going on the board? Is it going to be unionists? Are they going to say to the government which firms are going to be able to get funding? Will it be union dominated, meaning that they have to have union workers? These things need to be answered. And if that is the case—if union members are going to go on the board—then why? What right do they have to be on the board? It should be experienced people in the business world, not unions, involved in this. Those questions need to be asked.

I was listening to a Greens' senator yesterday—Shoebridge. He said that we're destroying native forests at a greater rate than human CO2. Actually, no, Senator Shoebridge. All your wind farms are destroying them. Go up to North Queensland on the tablelands and have a look at the hundreds of thousands of acres that you've put under wind farms. You've destroyed natural habitat. You've destroyed the flora and fauna. You are destroying them with your wind farms, which are killing birds and animals—killing flora and fauna. And there are acres and acres of them. There's the size of these wind turbines, which come from China—China, mind you!—and your solar panels, which are mostly out of China. There's 800 tonnes of cement in the base of one of these wind turbines. Again, how is that beneficial to the environment? Are we going to put the moneys from the fund into putting more of these into the country?

We can't run this country on just wind and solar. That is so stupid, to head down that path. It's not going to happen. We haven't got the batteries to store the power. So you're heading down a pathway that is going to destroy our economy, our jobs, our industries and our manufacturing—let alone putting people in a situation in their households where they will not be able to turn on their power for heating, for warmth. But no—listen to the Greens!

Senator Hanson-Young says: 'Scrap fossil fuel subsidies.' Well, then, let's scrap the billions in subsidies to renewable energy. What's the difference? Wind farms are destroying the environment—the wildlife, birds, flora and fauna. Solar panels do not and will not alter climate change and will not deliver the cheap, reliable power that we need.

The Greens are scaremongering with the term 'pollution' as to CO2. It's just ridiculous. It's a gas that is necessary, vital, for all life on this planet to exist. If you're going to scaremonger and tell us that we need to get rid of it, that is absolutely ridiculous. Ninety-seven per cent of CO2 is from natural sources—basically, the oceans, and 70 per cent of this earth is covered by oceans. So why the hell would we tax people or companies and businesses, or tell people to turn off their power? Even Tim Flannery said that if you turned it off and got rid of the CO2, it would never change a damn thing—never alter the earth's temperature at all. All this scaremongering that's going on is purely to get the vote or confuse kids in our education system who don't know what they're doing.

Europe has learnt from this. They got rid of their coal-fired power stations and shut down their gas, and now they understand that people are dying because they can't warm their houses and that their industries are going. Now they've turned around and they're opening up coalmines and building power stations.

And it's not only that. It's the hypocrisy from the Greens again. Where's your complaint about China? Where's your complaint about China's emissions of 30 per cent? You never mention that. You never mention shutting down the imports that we get from them, from all their emissions—not one word! No-one speaks about China or India. India won't change it till 2070 and China not till 2060. So what a bunch of hypocrites in this place! And you actually want to destroy our economy. You want to shut down people's livelihoods and our standard of living in this country. It's an absolute disgrace! I wish that you would actually talk with some truth instead of the scaremongering that goes on all the time in this chamber, purely to get the vote. And that is not what we are about. You want to talk about future generations. There is no computer modelling, no proof, to say that you know that temperature is going to rise by 1½ to two degrees in a hundred years time. What a joke!

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023, provides an opportunity for Australia to build a new economic future. However, what that future looks like will be up to the government. It could be a future with a thriving economy, where we invest in renewable energy technology, the circular economy and new sustainable, innovative products, or it could be a future relying on more of the same under a different name—financing industries that destroy our environment, our climate and our home; focusing on defence technologies or industries that feed into giant fossil fuel projects; or allowing the destruction of country.

I commend the Greens for negotiating the prohibition of direct investment by the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation into coal and natural gas projects, as well as native forest logging. But there is more to this. There are many industries that are required for these projects to go ahead; they produce the equipment for gas drilling and the machinery needed for coalmining or for logging our forests. Today I will be moving amendments to prohibit the corporation from investing in these industries as well. I'll also be moving an amendment to prohibit investments in nuclear technologies, at a time when nuclear war has become more threatening than it has been over the last 30 years and at a time when we know not only the dangers of nuclear energy production and dealing with radioactive waste but also the economic rabbit hole that nuclear power constitutes. It only makes sense to exclude this thinking, which is from the past, from our planning for the future. For those of you worried about nuclear medicines, we can and will continue to produce nuclear medicines, but this can be done safely, through the use of particle accelerators rather than nuclear reactors, posing much less risk to our communities and environment.

I will also move an amendment requiring any extractive industry project or major development that is seeking funding through the corporation to demonstrate that they have thoroughly engaged with the traditional owners of the land of the proposed project, that they have provided information to traditional owners in accessible formats and properly consulted about what they are proposing to do, and, last but not least, that they have actually obtained consent for the project. Our economy of the future should not be built against the wishes and concerns of First Nations people. There are many projects that our people would like to, and will, support. Your votes on these investment related amendments will be a sign of which future you want to see for this country.

The second reading amendment in my name further stresses the importance of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation taking into account free, prior and informed consent. Australia has a poor record of ensuring First Nations people are being heard and are getting a say in what happens on their country. This would be an encouraging step towards ensuring we actually comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which we endorsed 14 years ago but have done almost nothing to actually implement. This commitment could easily be incorporated into the investment mandate, which will be prepared shortly, and could be part of the investment application process. I therefore foreshadow that I will later move the second reading amendment in my name on sheet 1916, seeking the government's commitment to the corporation ensuring that the principle of free, prior, and informed consent is adhered to by those receiving funding for major projects with environmental impact.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023. In relation to this bill, let me say upfront that there has been a lot of disappointing legislation and programs delivered by those opposite since they came into government, but this really ranks right up at the top of bad, bad legislation for our nation. This is a highly cynical bill that I think reeks of left-wing policies and politics, instead of being a genuine nation-building policy and program. It is a flawed fraud on the Australian people and the Australian economy, and it will do far more harm than good to this nation.

Labor has made a desperate, last-minute, dodgy deal with the Greens, which will prohibit coal or gas from receiving finance from the National Reconstruction Fund. The fact is that Australian manufacturers rely on cheap energy to make things onshore, but Labor's continued irresponsible demonisation of gas and their broken promises to bring power prices down will force more Australian manufacturers offshore. One result of that is possibly far more expensive gas for Australians, but it also impacts people like the Ukrainians, who we're forcing still to rely a lot on Russian gas, so every expert in the country is calling on the Prime Minister to unlock more supplies of gas. Indeed, some manufacturers have had their gas bills triple. At the same time, those opposite say this is all about supporting Australian manufacturers.

What this dodgy, irresponsible deal has done is ensure that we make it as difficult as possible for Australian manufacturers. In fact, you couldn't think of anything worse to do to Australian manufacturers at this time than to triple their energy prices. Are you taking a photo of me, Senator Pratt?

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I'm taking a photo of my neck—good ergonomic practice.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Acting Deputy President Cox. I thought I was seeing Senator Pratt take another photo in the chamber. My apologies. It is very, very clear that, despite all of their rhetoric before the election, Labor will always work with the Greens against the interests of families, businesses and our manufacturers. That is very clear. No matter what they say before the election, they always do that after the election.

Benchmark power prices for hundreds of thousands of Australians are set to rise by more than 20 per cent over coming months. Sadly, for all Australians who are already struggling with the increased cost of living, including increased power costs, this desperate and very dodgy deal will make it worse for Australian manufacturers and for everyday Australians through further increases to power prices. The Minister for Industry and Science speaks out of one side of his mouth, saying that he supports gas, but his actions in caving in to these radical Green amendments speak the loudest. This is a very bad bill, which has become even worse with this dodgy deal. We on this side of the chamber will fight it because it is such a flawed bill.

There are five main reasons why this bill is flawed. Let me share them with you now. The fund will be administered by a corporation with an independent board, who will deliver against an investment mandate set by the government, but that framework is fundamentally flawed for five reasons. As I've said, it will make the circumstances for Australian manufacturers and for Australian energy consumers—that is, Australian families—all the worse. What's worse is that Labor and the Greens understand these flaws, yet they are still going ahead with this legislation. To me, it reeks of them pushing through the repeal of the cashless debit card, knowing, and having had warning of, the consequences this would have for thousands of Indigenous Australians and remote communities, but they were ideologically hell-bent on introducing it—the safety and security of those communities and women and children be damned! That is exactly what we're seeing here. They are going to introduce this legislation, come hell or high water, and they don't really care about the implications for Australian workers, Australian manufacturing and, of course, our energy producers.

Let's have a look at the five reasons why this is such bad legislation. Firstly, the bill is almost devoid of any economic considerations. The government promised before the election to address rising energy prices, but, as we've heard time and time again in question time inside this place, it's another broken promise. They don't really care at all. The government must address rising energy prices, and they must address labour market shortages and disrupted supply chains, if our manufacturers are to succeed. Without the policies—and they have no policies in any of these areas yet to create stronger economic conditions—any government spending like this, apart from being inflationary, will have no positive impact on our economy. It would be money in one pocket and money out of the other, due to the cost pressures that the government in its first nine months has completely failed to deliver, as every Australian will tell you about the pressures on their hip pockets.

The coalition is opposing this bill because this arrogant government is telling our manufacturers what they think they need and what they ideologically are now bound to deliver because of this deal, rather than addressing what our manufacturers actually need to be competitive, to produce and to employ Australians. The simple fact is that, without these other policies, they are holding industry back, and this is not just useless but counterproductive. It seems that every time Labor are in government, they have such terrible luck. Every time they come to government, there is such an unprecedented crisis, but that is government and that is always the case. That's the first thing, that they don't have the economic policies to make this policy work.

The second flaw—fundamental flaw—in this policy is that this bill will create even more lost time for manufacturers. In this terribly broken model, it will take far too long for money to start flowing to manufacturers. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, on which the NRF is modelled, was established in 2012, and the first investment took nearly 12 months to make. Our manufacturers cannot afford to wait that long. The government announced that the NRF should be up and running by next financial year, but, of course, they have not yet given any indication of a start date. Why? Because they know it is going to be a long time away. That's the second reason this is such flawed legislation.

The third reason is that the NRF is based on a highly flawed and very poor funding model. The model shifts from competitive grant programs, which have built within them robust processes for government to acquire equity and for how government provides loans. This, in their model, will lead inevitably to unfavourable and unintended consequences. Government equity and loan schemes are less accessible than grants, and manufacturers are almost certainly going to struggle to meet their return-on-investment thresholds or put together detailed business cases in-house. These are the sorts of things that the Labor Party and the Greens do not think about. What is the reality of business development and equity financing and capital-raising for manufacturing companies in Australia? What will happen to failed or failing loans? It is clear that the last experiment down a very similar path was the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, which uprooted manufacturers. Eligibility is another issue. Certain industries may have margins which are too small or could be too risky with disrupted supply chains that many companies are still facing.

The fourth flaw—the fourth very fundamental flaw—in this legislation is that this bill undermines investment certainty in our nation's priorities. With the government changing Australia's national manufacturing priorities on a highly partisan political whim not based on sound economic principles, it will undermine investment decisions and erode investors' confidence. This is particularly pertinent to the space industry, to complementary medicine and, to a lesser extent but still validly, to the recycling industry. The Labor government's new priorities are too vague and they strip industry policy of the focus needed to drive investment in highly tailored and specific sectors. This is so typical of Labor, choosing to spray money indiscriminately instead of continuing investment certainty for our manufacturers and our industry.

If that wasn't enough, there is a fifth reason why this is such a flawed fraud on the Australian people: the bill, ultimately, is fiscally irresponsible. In delivering funding well in excess of the coalition's Modern Manufacturing Strategy—which was highly targeted, specific and aimed at value-adding for manufacturing in this nation—an initial $5 billion appropriation is provided upon passage of this bill. But this is the kicker: the timing of the remaining $10 billion will not be subject to further parliamentary approval. Think about that. This is the next Labor Party slush fund, one of $10 billion. This is why it is so flawed.

In fact, similar financial structures to the one underpinning this bill have drawn criticism from the IMF itself:

Implementation of below-the-line activity through newly created investment vehicles—

such as the NRF, which is what we're talking about today—

should be phased appropriately, and, more broadly, a proliferation of such vehicles should be avoided.

They are bad policy and they are fiscally irresponsible. The IMF also said:

Cost-of-living support in light of high energy prices should be targeted, aimed at protecting vulnerable households and small viable firms.

Let's not forget: Labor are carelessly rushing through a total of $45 billion of off-budget spending. This has to be stopped by this place. It is inflationary. It will further drive up the cost of living, particularly power prices, for all Australian families. Worse, it will not achieve the desired or the stated effect by those opposite of increasing targeted manufacturing in this nation.

I'll finish on this, which is something that absolutely floored me—but, then again, I'm not surprised. When the Assistant Minister for Manufacturing, Senator Ayres, and the department were pressed in Senate estimates recently about whether any modelling had been done on the inflationary pressures of the NRF, and what inflationary pressures they would cause, what do you think the answer was? Had the Labor Party and the government modelled this in any way to determine the inflationary impact on Australians, particularly now with the high cost of living for all Australians under this government? The department official said, 'No.' No inflationary modelling on this at all, despite the fact it is very clear this could well have an inflationary impact on Australians and on companies, particularly for their energy prices. When pressed further—as if that wasn't bad enough—the response from the official was this: they didn't do it because they didn't think it was necessary. This government did not think it was necessary to even model the inflationary impact of this clearly inflationary policy. The only reason you can possibly imagine they did that is they can say, when it inevitably drives up inflation and energy costs, 'Well, no-one told us.' That's because you didn't ask and because you ignored the economic facts.

The coalition acknowledges the importance of having strong supports for Australian manufacturing, which is why we achieved this and delivered the Modern Manufacturing Strategy. But it was transparent and it was sound economically. Labor's National Reconstruction Fund is many times the cost, has great risks for Australian taxpayers and will demonstrably not result in any benefit for Australian manufacturers. It will just result in more pain for Australian taxpayers.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Throughout Australia's history, manufacturing has been at the heart of our economic growth and success. The revitalisation of our manufacturing sector is of critical importance not only as a pillar of our domestic economy but also as a crucial element of our national security. Supporting our manufacturing industry is, therefore, key to Australia's future. However, the future will not look so kindly—history will look very dimly—on Labor's National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill. This bill fails to address the economic conditions now facing Australian manufacturers. It fails to provide for timely funding. It fails to present manufacturers with a rational funding model. And it fails to provide investment certainty. The bill is, in other words, a reckless and slapdash attempt to throw money at the manufacturing industry, with no certainty as to the returns that it will deliver. This is typical Labor legislation. This is typical Labor policy on the run. It is neither rational nor responsible. It is, in fact, an embarrassingly poor attempt at a manufacturing policy. Under this government, Australians, including manufacturers, are dealing with soaring energy prices, labour market shortages and disrupted supply chains. This economy, under this Albanese Labor government, is spiralling out of control. The government's response to this chaos is to tell manufacturers what they think they need rather than addressing what they want.

A number of weeks ago, I attended the 25th anniversary celebration of the Geelong Manufacturing Council. Geelong has an incredible history of manufacturing. It is one of the centres of excellence of manufacturing in this country. So it was with great pride that I attended that function, which brought together manufacturers from the areas of food, agriculture, diesel, petrol, heavy chemicals and right across the spectrum of all types of manufacturing. I'll tell you the two things that manufacturers were talking about, while the Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Corio, gave his speech, which said nothing of substance. I'll tell you what they were saying on the floor of the event. There are two things that this Labor government needs to fix. One is spiralling energy costs and the ridiculous energy cap legislation, which has created more uncertainty—so much uncertainty that the gas import terminal proposed by Viva Energy at Geelong's refinery is now up in the air. There is so much uncertainty because of the haphazard and unacceptable way that this government has attempted to fix the spiralling costs of energy. The other thing is, of course, the multi-employer bargaining provisions. Manufacturers around this country are appalled by what this government is doing to their business. They are appalled. Any business approaching 20 employees, or with more than 20 employees, under this Labor government, is a sitting duck. Do you know why they're talking quietly on the floor of these events, speaking to us in confidence? Because, if they stick their head up, they will be destroyed by the unions. They will be targeted as soon as those provisions come into force.

If this Labor government wants to do the manufacturing industry any favour, it should get out of the way. It should allow our manufacturers across the country to thrive in the best possible conditions. I say, on behalf of all manufacturers in Victoria: one of the reasons that we have such a fine history of manufacturing is our low energy prices, delivered primarily by brown coal. That kept our energy prices, our electricity prices, lower than anywhere else in the country. Under this government and under the Daniel Andrews Labor government in Victoria, we are now delivering the highest, or amongst the highest, prices in the country, which is putting manufacturers' backs to the wall. And of course we will never forget in our city, in our region, in Victoria, what the former Labor governments, the Rudd-Gillard governments, did when they were in government. They imposed a carbon tax on all Australians and all manufacturers, which of course hurt everyone economically, particularly employers. It had a huge impact on jobs.

As part of that terrible climate that Labor created when it was last in government, Ford closed on Labor's watch. In 2013, under Labor, Ford announced it was ending manufacturing. And this Labor government continues to prosecute the argument that car manufacturing stopped under our government. Well, I can tell you there was no finer manufacturer in our city, in our region, than Ford at both Geelong and Broadmeadows, and they packed up shop—they announced that they were closing manufacturing—under the former Labor government, because the conditions that they were forced to compete in meant that Ford was no longer competitive.

This is terrible, terrible legislation. As I say, this is not what our manufacturers want. They want cheap energy prices. They want industrial relations harmony. They do not want a situation where, within a matter of weeks or months, they will have a knock at the door: 'Oh, we've got a vote. We're now coming for you. We've got Geelong Refinery in our region, so we're now going to suggest that all manufacturers in Geelong pay the same wages that are paid at a large corporation like Viva Energy.' There is so much fear. There is so much fear by reason of what this government has done.

I have to say as someone who has proudly stood up for manufacturing that before I was ever elected, growing up in Geelong, and after I was first elected in 2013, the many ways that we drove investment into Geelong manufacturers and into manufacturing across this country meant that those really dark days that we faced in 2013 were reversed. That was because of the enormous amount of investment on a competitive basis that we drove into great regions like Geelong, including our fine Geelong manufacturers. Of course, we're very proud of our $2.5 billion Modern Manufacturing Strategy, which sought to bolster our sovereign manufacturing capability and empowered over 200 key projects across Australia. Despite Labor promising over and over again that their National Reconstruction Fund would reinvigorate manufacturing in Australia, we saw next to nothing in the budget to roll out this program. And now Labor have chosen to spitefully redirect the Modern Manufacturing Initiative funding without even having rolled out their own National Reconstruction Fund.

So I say to this government, from the grassroots, from the manufacturers and their workers, who work so hard every single day to produce the goods and services for our country: why don't you start listening? Why don't you start listening to what they're saying in their factories on the factory floors, in their shopfronts and in their businesses? They want cheaper power prices. They want industrial relations harmony. They want to be allowed to get on and deliver. Supported by great programs like the Modern Manufacturing Strategy, that's what these manufacturers were doing.

Let me just reiterate that, firstly, this bill ignores key economic issues. The government have failed to address rising energy prices, labour market shortages and disrupted supply chains, which they need to if our manufacturers are to succeed. This is classic Labor policy: 'Let's just throw a bucket of money at this.' That's just what they did with the VEDC, the Victorian Economic Development Corporation. The government thought it was part of the market, and it was a disaster—tens and tens of millions of dollars of losses.

The second flaw with this bill is it will create even more lost time for manufacturers. This is a broken model. Under this model, which was modelled on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation—which is a much more specific program—it will take a very significant time for the money to start flowing. Our manufacturers cannot afford to wait that long, particularly when all of the investment that we put into manufacturing has now been reallocated or cut. The NRF has a very poor funding model because it shifts from a competitive grant program with robust processes, where applications are decided on their merits, to government acquiring equity and providing loans, which is likely to lead to unintended consequences. Government equity and loan schemes are less accessible than grants, and manufacturers may struggle to meet the return-on-investment thresholds, or all of the investment required to put together a detailed business case in house. What's going to happen if a manufacturer is saddled with a failing loan? What is going to happen to the financial viability of those businesses? That is a question that the government cannot answer.

The bill also undermines investment certainty in national priorities, with the government changing Australia's national manufacturing priorities on a political whim, undermining investment decisions and eroding investment confidence. This is particularly pertinent to the space industry, complementary medicine and, to a lesser extent, recycling. I have to say, on that note, that just yesterday I had a meeting with a university which is doing an enormous amount of work in space and aerospace. They are doing cutting-edge work, actually working with a private business in launching a satellite. Not only are they giving incredible opportunities to their students but also they are embracing school students. To exclude space and aerospace as a key manufacturing priority is a very, very big mistake which needs to be rectified.

The other point that I want to make is that the bill is fiscally irresponsible. It delivers funding well in excess of the coalition's Modern Manufacturing Strategy, without any of the checks and balances. An initial $5 billion appropriation is provided upon passage of the bill, but the timing of the remaining $10 billion will not be subject to further parliamentary approval, which is extraordinary. Can you imagine if we, when we were in government, brought a $10 billion appropriation to the parliament and had not been accountable? In fact, similar financial structures to the one underpinning this bill have drawn criticism from the IMF, which stated:

Implementation of below-the-line activity through newly created investment vehicles—

such as the NRF—

should be phased appropriately, and, more broadly, a proliferation of such vehicles should be avoided.

And this is the important part. The IMF said:

Cost-of-living support in light of high energy prices should be targeted, aimed at protecting vulnerable households and small viable firms.

Of course, Labor hasn't done any of that. It has just got this ugly bucket of money—a big, fat slush fund that it's just throwing out there, thinking it can do the job. I can tell you, from the manufacturers on the ground all around this country, this is shocking policy. It is time that this Labor government started to focus on the things that really matter: proper competitive support, lower power prices and changing the revolting, regressive IR laws.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand here as a member of a coalition party that has a very strong record in supporting manufacturing in this country. We did so during our time in government and we would have continued to do so, and we will continue to do so when we are in government again, because we believe that there are manufacturing industries in Australia that have been the backbone of our country.

I can't think of any manufacturing sector that has been more vertically integrated in this country than the Australian wine industry. I come from a very proud winegrowing area in the Riverland of South Australia. The reason I say that I think the wine industry is probably the most vertically integrated manufacturing sector in Australia is that, first of all, we grow the primary product. We grow something from the natural environment, whether that be the soil or the water. We then manufacture that product into something that is not only consumed in Australia but also a very large export product for Australia.

Most importantly, it is also a tourism industry. Many people from around the world visit Australia because they want to experience not just our world-class wine but also the experiences that we offer through our fantastic wine regions. Every single state and territory of Australia has something proud to showcase in relation to the wine industry. So there can be no better example of a vertically integrated manufacturing sector than our fantastic Australian wine industry.

Do you know what I think the greatest threat to the manufacturing sector in Australia is right now? It's rising energy costs. So many of our fantastic industries rely on not just reliable energy but also affordable energy in order to manufacture. There is no point in making great investments in manufacturing unless you actually deal with the cost of doing business and the challenges that are currently facing the Australian manufacturing sector.

It was so devastating yesterday to hear about pools. As the shadow minister for health I think there can be nothing that is more important than being able to provide an environment in Australia where Australians, particularly Australian children, have access to a healthy lifestyle and are able to participate in sport. We're now hearing that swimming centres across the country are not heating their pools to the same extent that they previously were—to the temperatures that they thought were the most appropriate to enable a comfortable experience for Australians who want to participate in water sport and swimming as part of their health regimes. We're now seeing swimming centres dropping the temperature because they cannot afford the energy costs to maintain the temperature levels in pools. This is an extraordinary admission of the failure of this government to provide support to deliver the things that we know that Australian businesses, industry and manufacturing can do.

The other thing that is really disappointing about the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 is the fact that it basically applies every single piece of bad policy and bad legislative design and regulation, and stuffs it all into one bill. The fact that we have got this off-balance sheet—and it seems to be a bit of a track record of those opposite in the ideological pursuit of somehow being able to say that budget repair has occurred. They've stuffed a whole heap of money into off-balance-sheet instruments so that they don't have to list it on the bottom line of their budget. It's not just this one. We've got Rewiring the Nation. We've got the housing fund, which, surprisingly, seems to have disappeared off our Notice Paper and doesn't seem to be the subject of the hours motion that is sitting on our tables to consider later this afternoon. That one seems to have disappeared. But we have got tens of billions of dollars being hidden in off-balance sheets.

Of course, we all know that it doesn't matter whether it's on the government's balance sheet or whether it's off the government's balance sheet; expenditure that is not designed appropriately and is not designed around the productivity outcomes that need to be associated with it becomes inflationary. This government has not paid any attention whatsoever to the inflationary impact of this fund. Because it is off-balance sheet and it relies on other market aspects in terms of the functioning of the broader market, what can actually be spent becomes really uncertain. It also avoids proper and robust process, and proper and robust scrutiny.

When you are spending this kind of money, Australian taxpayers' money, you really do need to make sure that you have got a proper competitive process and that you're not just running around picking winners from the people that you like and your mates, and from the sectors that maybe are unionised. Who would know? But you can't do that, because Australian taxpayers have got the right to know that, when you put these kinds of things together, there is the absolute maximum level of strength of governance around them because it's their money you're spending. The one thing we need to remember in this place—and I never forgot this when I was in government: not one cent of the money I had responsibility for the administration of was my money. Every single cent of that money I was administering on behalf of the department I had responsibility for belonged to the taxpayers of Australia, and those opposite would do well to remember that.

The other thing is: what are the dodgy deals that have been done with the people in this place, that have been necessary to get this bill through this place? I will go back to another fantastic primary industry that has great advanced manufacturing opportunities in this country—that is, the forestry sector. What is the deal that has been done with the Greens to enable them to agree to this? I have to say: when this was first put out there during the election, the Prime Minister, who was the opposition leader at the time, claimed that forestry was at the heart of his manufacturing policy. So where has it gone? He said:

I promise you that if I become Prime Minister, a Government I lead will not shut down the native forest industry.

Is that still absolutely a promise? And, 'I will take up the fight to protect your job too.' It is going to be really interesting when we see the deals that have come out of this.

But your own previous minister for agriculture in a previous Labor government—somebody who I think had probably more integrity in him than anybody who sits on the other side of this chamber: Joel Fitzgibbon—is still an absolute supporter of the forestry sector and the opportunity that it provides for Australians, because we do have some of the best landscape, in order to develop a forestry sector. Guess what? Forestry is the ultimate renewable, and we have got an opportunity in Australia to have one of the greatest forestry sectors because we have the ability to harvest and replant and make sure we are managing our forests, because we have some of the best forestry management in the world. We are recognised worldwide as having some of the greatest forestry management. For those who don't particularly like forestry: have a look in your own house and have a look at some of the things you rely on for some of the fabulous hardwood timbers that are grown in this country, as we sit here today.

Overall, I suppose the greatest disappointment, as we stand here today, is the fact that once again we see bills that were promised coming in a form that has been mangled in order to get a deal. We have seen promises broken, as we have seen the promise to the forestry sector broken by the actions and changes of this government. 'Hand on heart, I will not touch your forestry sector'—it's all fine to say that before the election because you don't want to lose the votes in Tasmania or in other areas that rely so heavily on forestry on Australia, but all bets are off as soon as you win the election. You don't seem to care.

It seems to be a track record in just about everything so far. Who could forget the broken promise of power bills going down by $275. That has got to go down in history as this government's 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' You know what? I reckon there would not be a person, a business or anybody in the manufacturing sector in Australia who could honestly tell you their power bills have gone down since this government has come to office.

But it's not just the energy bills that are impacting; we have seen so many broken promises in so many places to so many Australians. In the sector that I have responsibility for, as the shadow minister for health and aged care, the almost litany of broken promises are too many to recall and recount here. A couple of the really serious ones include the promise to Australians that the government was going to put the care back into aged care. They wanted to put 24/7 nurses into nursing homes. There is nobody on my side on my politics that doesn't want to see older Australians get the care and support they deserve as they age, but you can't go out and make promises just to get yourself elected and then, once you're elected, try and double down on them even though you do not have the capacity to deliver them. There simply aren't any nurses to fill your 24/7 nursing commitment. I think that is absolutely irresponsible and creates distress and uncertainty in such an important sector—one that's just come through the COVID pandemic under extraordinary pressure. But you don't seem to care about that.

The other one is that we were very proud, when we were in government, of our track record, because we believe that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is one of the core pillars of our health system. Being able to provide Australians with timely access to affordable medicines is something we thought was an essential part of our health system, and that's why we prioritised it. So, during our time in government we moved to make sure we listed every medicine that was recommended by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee so that Australians could get access to them.

What do we find right now, only a matter of months into this government? We've seen, first of all, the de-listing from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme of a life-changing insulin drug for diabetics called Fiasp. We saw the minister do a sort of semi-backflip last week when he agreed he would continue its prescription for another few months for people who were already receiving it but then had the audacity to double down at the Pharmacy Guild conference last week and say, well, actually, it wasn't his fault, because he hadn't had a request for ministerial intervention in this. I mean, really: these people have been talking to you for about nine months, Minister, asking you to consider using your ability to stop the drastic price reduction that has been forced onto it by a mechanism. That's why you had the ministerial discretion in the first place—because we knew there would always be circumstances whereby an innovative component of a drug that wasn't based on the molecule that it was based on would mean it was going to be superior.

This drug, Fiasp, is a superior drug, and we know that while 15,000 Australians who rely on it would have been chucked off it in a couple of days time, they at least have it until the end of September. But what happens then? Really, Minister, this is a very lazy way of addressing this, and we would call on you to honour the commitment of this chamber. This chamber actually agreed and passed legislation that included an amendment that said that you would relist this on a permanent basis. So, honour the promise, and honour and respect the decision of this chamber and relist that medicine on a permanent basis.

The other one is that the PBAC approved a drug called Trikafta for children aged between six and 12 who are sufferers of cystic fibrosis. We found out a few weeks ago that the government had decided that it wasn't going to list the drug on the PBS. If I detected a little bit of a tone yesterday when Senator Farrell was asked in the chamber about this, he did, speaking from the speaking notes that he was handed at the last minute, seem to indicate that there were some ongoing discussions to see how this drug could be listed 'as soon as possible'—whatever that means.

But to have a government that only months into its reign is already taking life-changing drugs off the PBS and refusing to list drugs for six- to 12-year-olds who suffer from cystic fibrosis is a tragic indictment of your inability to manage a really important health system and the PBS. The fact is that last time you were in government, by your own admission on the public record, your health minister in the Gillard-Rudd government actually admitted that you had stopped listing medicines on the PBS because you couldn't afford to do so. Right now we are, as I said, only a matter of months into the reign of this particular Labor government, and already we are seeing drugs taken off the PBS and a minister refusing to intervene—a minister seeking almost to mislead about when he found out about this problem. We know that the company has been speaking to his office for months and months, yet he says he found out only a few weeks ago, and we've had a life-changing drug taken off for young people. (Time expired)

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023, because it will do nothing to halt the deindustrialisation of this once proud manufacturing nation—a deindustrialisation that's been happening at pace before our eyes. Over the past decade we've produced fewer manufacturing goods than we did in the previous decade, which is the first time on record that that's ever happened. We now no longer produce enough steel for our own domestic needs, despite being the world's largest producer of the main components that go into making steel—coking coal and iron ore.

Later this year, tragically, our last major fertiliser plant, or at least a plant that produces urea, the most important fertiliser used in farming, will shut. Just after Christmas this year, we will effectively be completely reliant on other countries to grow our food. About half of Australian food production requires the use of urea, and we will no longer make it in this nation even though the feedstock for urea is natural gas—and we've got heaps of that. We're the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, but we will no longer manufacture the important product of urea. Not to mention AdBlue, which most people have become aware of given the crisis we had there about a year ago. You need urea to make AdBlue for the trucking industry.

It's not a good news story for manufacturing. We really do need radical action to rectify that. I'll put on record at the start of this contribution that I don't think the former coalition government took this issue seriously enough and did not take sufficient action to try to turn things around. The main reason for the decline in our manufacturing industry—I'll put it down to two factors. One is energy prices. We've heard that manufacturers are paying more than double for electricity and 50 per cent higher for gas, and those figures are actually from before Ukraine's crisis. That has killed competitive manufacturing in this country. Given that our labour costs are high, we just simply cannot compete if our energy costs are high too. We have to make a choice. If we want to have dear wages, which I think we all do and it's a good thing people get paid well in this country, then we have to have cheap power prices. If we have dear wages and dear power prices, we'll end up with no jobs. That's what has been happening in the manufacturing industry, with 300,000 manufacturing jobs lost over the past few decades—a pace that has been increasing.

The other big factor in this decline is the complete free ride we have given to the Chinese Communist Party on their entry into the World Trade Organization. When they entered the World Trade Organization just over 20 years ago, in 2001, they made commitments to the world that they would become more transparent in their subsidies, they would remove massive energy subsidies from their industries. They have done nothing. They've actually doubled down on those over the last two decades, and yet we sit back and seemingly take no action against this complete abuse of the international trading system. And so there's no surprise, or should be no surprise, when they steal our jobs.

Why do we now import 50 per cent of our steel needs? That wasn't the case 20 years ago. We had steel plants; we had enough steel plants to produce enough steel for Australia. Now we only have two steel mills left and we import around half of our steel needs from overseas, mainly from China. Why does that happen? How can China compete against us? We send them the coking coal and the iron ore from here, all the way through to China. They turn that into steel—it's not a particularly labour intensive process—and we import it back from them. Why can they do that? Because they massively subsidise their own energy industry. On some measures, put forward by unions in the United States, the energy subsidies for Chinese steel manufacturing approach 60 and 70 per cent of their production costs subsidised by the Chinese government. Why do we not take action against this? Why do we sit back and let this happen? We should be taking more action against that, and I'll have more to say about that towards the end of my contribution.

I do want to go to this bill, though. I'd be keen to support things that would help our problem around declining manufacturing, but this bill won't do that at all because there is smoke-and-mirrors financial trickery by the government going on in this bill. The headline here is that this will be a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund. The minister says it's going to build a fertiliser plant, apparently. It's going to do all these things, make all these promises. But let's look into the actual numbers and the detail. This is what it's cost us in industry policy and manufacturing policy for decades. There is far too much focus on headline BS, if I can say that. There is absolute rubbish in headlines that sound good—$15 billion here; $1½ billion there—but when you look into detail it doesn't add up to much at all.

This fund won't actually be direct grants to build a urea plant or anything like that, it will simply be a loan facility or an equity injection. They'll take investments into manufacturing through this $15 billion fund. And obviously, like anybody making an investment, you expect a return on that investment. You expect the return of the capital with interest, as the government will do from this fund. So, it's not a free kick for the manufacturing industry.

Let's look at what the actual benefit will be from $15 billion of loans or equity. Currently, the 10-year government bond rate is 3.3 per cent. It's fallen a little bit in the last couple of months, but it is 3.3 per cent. Even if the government only required that return—and typically in other funds they've required a little bit more to have some adjustment for risk, but, let's be fair, and I'll be very generous to the government and say that they'll lend out at roughly the 10-year bond rate of 3.3 per cent—that would mean that the interest on $15 billion that the manufacturing industry would have to pay would be $484 million a year.

How much would that save them? Well, they could go to the market, of course, and borrow money. The BBB interest rate, which roughly would be what a lot of manufacturing companies would be rated around, is currently 6½ per cent, so their interest bill on $15 billion would be just shy of a billion dollars—$984 million. So it's $484 million if the government lends them money and $984 million if they borrowed from the market. That's $500 million a year. For an industry that invests, the manufacturing industry, despite our de-industrialisation, it actually needs investment of capital expenditure of $10 billion a year, so this is not a big saving. It's not going to do much; $500 million is not going to do much. In fact, it's actually less than the $1½ billion the former coalition government put aside that this government has scrapped to replace this amount.

We've got to drop this rubbish, as I say, this industry policy by media release, where we think we put out a media release and it's going to make a difference because the number looks big on that. It's a perverse episode of Utopia here where people go, 'Let's just put a big figure on a whiteboard, and that will solve all the issues.' It's not going to do that. It is not going to rekindle an era of industrialisation in this nation based on those very clear figures alone.

We have to get serious if we want to rebuild manufacturing in this country, so I don't want to support a lame attempt to distract from the real issues that face Australian manufacturers. I think doing so would give false hope to the manufacturing industry. It would also mean that the bureaucrats here, and the government more broadly, would just put their pens down and say: 'It's all done. We've passed a reconstruction fund. Our work here is done, and we don't have to actually tackle the real issues that face Australian manufacturing, fix those and, through that, actually make sure that we rekindle investment.'

We did have a serious look at this in the Nationals party a few years ago during the COVID crisis. Do you remember we were going to make things again after COVID? Do you remember all that? We didn't want to be reliant on China and all that stuff, and we were going to make things. We thought, 'Let's have a serious attempt at making a contributions debate of becoming a manufacturing country again.' So, we produced a nine-point plan from the Nationals party to do this. We spoke to lots of people in the industry, so we didn't have any particular sacred cows around trade policy or energy policy. We just wanted the best for Australian manufacturers. The Nationals party ticked off on this, saying that if we're serious we need to take action against China for its illegal trade policy actions. These are not just the actions they've taken against Australian exporters in the last few years post-COVID. As I mentioned, these are the massive energy subsidies. They get away with blue murder through trade policy and we take no action. We can, under WTO rules, institute a proper inquiry into Chinese energy subsidies to their manufacturing industries, and, if that study came back that those subsidies were against WTO rules, which most certainly they would be, then we could take what is called countervailing action against them and protect our own industries.

Why don't we do that? Why don't we stand up for Australian jobs and put an end to the abuse that China has engaged in on manufacturing for the last couple of decades? It's obviously not just affecting our nation; those jobs are stolen from all over the Western world. We now have a situation where almost the entire renewable energy supply chain is controlled by China. We're constantly told we've got to transition to these new energy types, but all our solar panels, our wind turbines and the rare earths that go into so many renewable energy technologies, like batteries through lithium processing, are all made and come through China, again thanks to these subsidies. We have to take action against this. As I say, in the Nationals party we were putting aside possibly decades of perceived wisdom about free trade, but it's not free trade when another nation does not abide by the rules, which China has not been doing.

We also need to recognise that a rekindling, a reindustrialisation, of Australia is not going to come through government investment. As I went through the figures before, the $15 billion here doesn't mean $15 billion; it's a few hundred million. It's not enough. As I said, about $10 billion a year is invested in manufacturing today, and that's in a climate where our manufacturing is declining. We need more than $10 billion a year,. We probably need to double that if we're serious about regrowing Australian manufacturing. It's just not going to come from Canberra. We do not have $10 billion a year to put into manufacturing.

Debate interrupted.