Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

In the budget we have just seen, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have broken their promises to the families of Geelong—promises that they would not hurt them. This budget in so many ways hurts the people of Geelong by severely cutting the household budgets of Geelong. We have seen $80 billion cut from schools and hospitals in 2014 budget and re-affirmed in the 2015 budget. The inequity of $100,000 university degrees, which were put in place in 2014 budget and which remain a part of this year's budget. It creates an impossible situation for Deakin University: in effect they have to choose either providing courses that are accessible to the people of Geelong—and thereby forego the revenue that would come from higher fees to fund its research activity—or charging higher fees and thereby creating courses that are less accessible to people from Geelong who would then have to travel to places like Ballarat or Melbourne to attend university. This is an impossible situation to put Deakin University in. As I have said on many occasions, when you look at great Australian regional cities what you find within them is a great university. There is no more important institution to the future of Geelong than Deakin University. This is a budget which hurts the future of Deakin.

Geelong has gone through a difficult period over the last couple of years with decisions by both Alcoa and Ford to take their operations out of Geelong. Both have been pillars of the private sector economy in Geelong for decades—Ford had been manufacturing cars in Geelong since 1928 and Alcoa had smelted aluminium there for more than 50 years. Those decisions came as an enormous economic shock to our community. Alcoa's decision was a particular shock because its transition happened much more quickly than that of Ford. The 900 people who were employed at Point Henry are no longer working. In the aftermath of that decision everyone expected that there would be some form of adjustment assistance provided by this government to the City of Geelong, as there has been to other regions when an economic shock of this kind has occurred in the past. The Labor government provided assistance when Ford made its decision back in 2013—on the very day of that decision Labor put up $15 million. That money is now part of a fund of more than $25 million, which is helping to create jobs in Geelong. It is not a long-term solution, but adjustment assistance is an important transition measure when a city goes through a phenomenon of this kind.

We have seen a complete and stubborn refusal on the part of this government to provide a single cent of adjustment assistance to the people of Geelong in the aftermath of Alcoa's decision, and that is re-affirmed in this year's budget. Again, there is not a cent for Geelong to recover from that decision.

According to the Department of Employment, Geelong's unemployment rate stood at 7.2 per cent as of April this year. That is higher than the national average. Something like 18 per cent of Geelong's youth are unemployed and now seeking jobs. By every measure this has been a budget that does nothing for the future of the people of Geelong. By the government's own test, this is a budget that has failed. We see that spending is up considerably; we see the deficit is up considerably; and unemployment is going to rise considerably. This government has failed the tests that Labor set for it, as well as the tests that it set for itself on coming into office. It begs the very real question now: what does the Abbott government stand for, when it is prepared to spend in this way and to create deficits of this kind?

This budget was, at the end of the day, about one person's job, and that was the Prime Minister's. It was a political document. It was not a document about the nation's interest. It was certainly not a document about Geelong's interest.

In looking at a matter more specifically within the budget, I want to talk a little bit about the defence industry in Geelong and Geelong's desire to play a bigger role within our nation's defence industry. It is a sensible and clever play for Geelong to try to move into this space. The defence industry is a high-tech industry often with high-tech manufacturing as a part of it. When you look at the future for Geelong, our future has to be in the space of innovation, in research, in high-tech manufacturing, in climbing the technological ladder—doing things in Australia, in Geelong, that you cannot do anywhere else in the world, competing on the basis of knowledge and quality as opposed to competing on the basis of price and low wages. That is why we need to move down a more high-tech path, and in that context the defence industry is a great industry for Geelong to pursue.

There are many advantages about Geelong in terms of its ability to participate within the defence industry. We do have, as I mentioned earlier, a fantastic university in Deakin which does incredible work particularly with composite materials. The carbon fibre research centre at Deakin University which was funded by the then Rudd government is the highest tech carbon fibre research furnace in the world. It really is asserting Geelong as the centre of a future carbon fibre industry in this country. There is also great robotics research done at Deakin that is relevant to the defence industry. There is, of course, by virtue of all the manufacturing history that we have had in Geelong, a skilled workforce ready to play its part. We have great organisations like the Gordon TAFE which are there ready to do whatever retraining is necessary.

Perhaps most critically, we have to the north of Geelong perhaps the best transport and logistics land in the country—a place where Highway 1, the national rail gauge, an airport and a seaport all converge within just a couple of kilometres of each other and there there is land which can be used to do transport and logistics, all of which is highly relevant to any defence industry plan. So this is a great opportunity for Geelong and specifically the LAND 400 project, which is about building the new state-of-the-art Army land vehicles and is a particularly good opportunity to get into the defence industry space. This is a $10 billion project for our nation. It is about updating our land capabilities, and positioning Geelong to have a part of that future is, I think, really important and definitely the kind of thing that Labor would want to support given our history within the automotive industry and given that the design part of Ford's business will remain in Geelong beyond 2016. There are obviously synergies associated with that.

Having made those observations about the significance of the defence industry and the significance of LAND 400, we see from this Liberal government and indeed the Liberal mayor in Geelong a group of people who are prepared to talk a pretty big game but, when it actually comes to delivering runs on the board and doing things on the ground, we have seen absolutely nothing. We saw the Liberal Mayor of Geelong on the front page of the Geelong Advertiser in July last year in front of his Australian flag, brandishing a toy machine gun in front of a fake armoured personnel carrier, talking about how wonderful LAND 400 was going to be. We saw the member for Corangamite dressed up in her military gear inside a tank at Puckapunyal on the front page of the Advertiser in February of this year. There is no shortage of media releases and photoshoots which the Liberals and Geelong will go to to promote this; but, when it comes to actually delivering this project, we have seen nothing. This budget gives us no line of sight at all about future investments in the LAND 400 project in Australia and specifically in Geelong. It is important to make the observation that there is just a sense that we have seen the Liberals peddling some false hope in Geelong, because this is about climbing the technological ladder and this is about a high-tech play going into the next decade. Indeed, Dr Roger Lough made this observation at a research dinner last year:

Don't look at it from a replacement to the car manufacturing side of things but look at it as a way of expanding the intellectual … capacity of Geelong …

We need to bear in mind what this is about, but, that said, I think LAND 400 is of critical importance to the future of Geelong. Under Labor, first pass on this project would have occurred in April of last year. That was deferred and so we have seen the project slip out and first pass did not occur until the beginning of this year. In Senate estimates just this week we have heard about further slippage in the LAND 400 project. Whereas the tenderer was expected to be chosen in early 2017, there seemed to be comments made yesterday that now that may not happen until 2018. What we see under the Liberals here in Canberra and with the Liberals in Geelong is LAND 400 slipping back. The idea being promoted was that we were going to see this project produce jobs in Geelong as soon as possible—that is something Labor wants to see happen. But, while we see that big game being talked in Geelong, we see very little action on the ground indeed.

We see that also in respect of the LAND 121 project. Again, I think some false hope has been peddled here. We had the Liberal mayor visiting Canberra in recent months and talking with people in this building, as well as in the Geelong Advertiser, about the prospect of bringing forward the scheduled review of the LAND 121 project from 2018 back to this year, 2015. This was with a view to working with Mercedes to see a consolidation of their business in Geelong—which would have created a couple of hundred jobs—on the basis that the LAND 121 project review would be brought forward to this year. On 7 March this year we had the Liberal mayor on the front page of the Geelong Advertiser talking a really big game about the prospects for LAND 121 and the jobs that would be created by bringing it forward. We saw him up here in Canberra, at ratepayers' expense, seeking to lobby whoever would talk to him—but what was the outcome of all that effort? I can tell you the outcome of that in this budget is that nothing has been brought forward. We will not see the LAND 121 project being brought forward in such a way that would put Mercedes in the game and would allow those jobs to be created in Geelong.

Once again, a whole lot of photo shoots, a whole lot of big talk on the part of Liberals in Geelong and in Canberra, but when it comes to delivering on the ground, delivering jobs in Geelong, we see absolutely nothing. By contrast, what you have had from Labor over the years is a diligent, a methodical and a concerted attempt to position Geelong into the defence industry. Chemring was the beneficiary of a $1.8 million grant out of the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund when Labor was in power and a further $3.7 million grant under the Priority Industry Capability Innovation Program when Labor was in power, which has been really critical in developing what was perhaps our biggest defence industry player in Geelong today.

Quickstep, a manufacturer of high-grade carbon fibre composite components which are able to be used on the Bushmaster, received a $1.76 million grant through the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund—the fund I referred to earlier that Labor set up when Ford made its decision to leave Geelong. This is exactly the kind of grant which is creating jobs in Geelong, exactly the kind of grant which cannot be made by virtue of no money having been provided to Geelong as a result of Alcoa's decision.

At a state level, Labor has put the Defence Procurement Office in Victoria, which is going to be based in Geelong to position Geelong at the centre of Victoria's defence industry future. On the part of Labor you see action when it comes to putting Geelong within the defence industry. On the part of the Liberals you see nothing but photo shoots and hot air.

See this speech in context