Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

There is a lot of delicacy and sensitivity on the other side, because at the last election they promised the industry whatever they needed to get over the line, and what did we see after the election? Not only did the Prime Minister break her promise not to introduce a carbon tax but she imposed $460 million in increased costs on Australian manufacturing.

They also broke $1.4 billion worth of their promises to the auto sector. So, the Labor Party is saying: 'We will tell you whatever you want to hear. We will promise you anything you want up until the election, and afterwards we will do the exact opposite.' So much of the discussion about the auto sector is around the components sector. We have heard the chief executive of the Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers say:

We are going to be impacted by a carbon tax, and our competitors (overseas) won't.

And in a very challenging environment, this government is saying, 'That's too bad.'

We even see, in the case of the large companies that were awarded compensation and in the words of Graham Cray of BlueScope, that any compensation is like a bandaid over a bullet wound—because, let's face it, you can never totally compensate for the damage you have caused. At least the so-called compensation was admission of the damage the carbon tax would cause. But even these large companies need to make decisions for when the so-called compensation runs out. Companies do not make decisions for a three-year period; they look to the long term, particularly when they are looking at significant investments. But what about all those businesses that do not even get the pretense of a look-in with compensation? They are left there to accept the additional burden.

You will have the Labor Party tell you, 'But we've given all this free money to households so they can afford the increased energy costs.' But they ignore—and the reality is—that so many of the products made in Australia are being replaced by cheaper imports that are given a head start because they do not have the additional electricity and energy charges imposed upon them, because they come from countries, unlike Australia, that do not subject their manufacturers to the world's largest carbon tax.

The reality is that there is great concern about job security in this country, particularly across the manufacturing sector, where 109,000 jobs have been lost since this party came to power. They can get up here and come to the dispatch box and pretend that the reality is something else. But workers out there, and their families, know the damage that is being done, because they are losing their jobs and their friends are losing their jobs. Manufacturers have come together in a new organisation called Manufacturing Australia to ensure that their voice is heard, because they want to continue to have viable businesses and they want to continue to have a viable future. And there is every reason that we can have that viable future. The simple first step is to remove damaging government policies like the carbon tax that are intended to slug and slow down the production of our manufacturing sector.

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