Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I can assure the member for Lalor that we are backing up workers Australia-wide, as I answered to the previous questions from the members for Wakefield and Hindmarsh on the stats in terms of manufacturing jobs moving forward. There was one thing I did not get to, because of time limitations, but subsequently checked out in the division. I am going to be cut off here in a minute, so I will go straight to it: a large portion of the defence spend that we are spending Australia-wide. The member for Hindmarsh mentioned Rossi Boots, and in the break I instructed the department to get in touch with them, because the Centre for Defence Industry Capability has been absolutely tasked, as we move into this crucial spend in our nation's defences, with better building the links between defence procurement and local business, with industry participation plans. There is a precedent here. RM Williams have already engaged with the Centre for Defence Industry Capability.

I note that the member for Hindmarsh has left, but I will seek him out when we leave here to tell him that the department will be in touch with Rossi Boots to work through this recently announced initiative co-hosted by the Minister for Defence Industry, Christopher Pyne—who likes to take all the credit, obviously, on all parts of this!—and my own Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. My wonderful Department of Industry, Innovation and Science is providing a lot of the grunt work sitting behind it, of course—sitting in the background getting the job done.

I want to finish where I started. We are committed to manufacturing. What we are trying to do through the National Innovation and Science Agenda is move from traditional manufacturing to advanced manufacturing, something we have had great success in doing over the last 18 months and we hope to continue to do.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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