Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has been shown time and time again that the Australian character is all about helping your mates, whether that's a soldier on a battlefield helping someone who has been wounded, whether that's a firefighter travelling to another state to help put out fires or whether that's shopping for a quarantined neighbour—and we've seen during the COVID response great stories of the Australian community coming together.

Today I'd like to focus on another thing that we all know helps our fellow Australians—that is, buying Australian made. There's already been a massive increase in interest—we've probably seen it in our own communities—for Australian made. It's been reported that in fact monthly licence applications have increased fivefold, new licences being issued have doubled, monthly traffic to the Australian Made website has doubled and social media across all channels has tripled. A recent KPMG study also showed that if households around Australia spent an extra $50 a week focusing on buying Australian made goods, that would translate to a $30 billion boost to really help fuel our COVID recovery. It would also mean the addition of tens of thousands of jobs.

Australia has fared comparatively well when we look around the globe, in terms of COVID response. This is an opportunity for us to really capitalise on that by getting behind Australian manufacturers and helping them to launch into new overseas markets. That's exactly what the Morrison government is helping Australians to do, with a $5 million grant focused on extending the international reach of the Australian Made logo.

Already, around home, I think we'd all agree that the Australian Made logo is very recognisable. In fact, 99 per cent of consumers recognise what that means. Now it's about increasing the international potency of exactly that symbol. The logo's already registered in the United States, China, South Korea and Singapore, and proceedings are underway to register that logo in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

I'm on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. Part of our terms of reference is to look at practical and policy measures where Australia can enhance our resilience. Certainly one of those ways is manufacturing. That is why the Morrison government is also manufacturing a new future for our nation through the $1.5 billion Modern Manufacturing Strategy. This strategy will create a manufacturing sector that is right for modern Australia's economy. It will help businesses to scale up and to become more resilient and more competitive. Indeed, manufacturing is critical to our modern economy and is a vital part of our response as we emerge out of COVID-19. There are six new National Manufacturing Priorities: resources; technology and critical minerals processing—extremely important to my home state of Western Australia; I note the member for Cowan and I'm certain that she agrees with me that mining and critical minerals—we're already very good at it in Western Australia and we know that we can get even better and more globally competitive. Then there's food and beverage; medical products; recycling and clean energy; and Defence, as well as space. Those are the National Manufacturing Priorities. Those priorities represent—

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Those priority areas that the government has focused upon are there because they represent sectors where we have a comparative advantage, where we've got the capacity to harness emerging opportunities, all because there is a strategic imperative behind them. There are close to 900,000 people employed in our manufacturing sector—the seventh-largest employing industry in Australia. In fact, total field jobs in manufacturing increased by 36,400 over the 12 months to December 2019. Our manufacturing exports were worth close to $55 billion in 2019, up nine per cent on 2018.

Manufacturing looks very different to what it did a generation ago, but there is a huge amount of opportunity for success if we continue to modernise our approach to manufacturing. As we move into the recovery phase, as we come out the other side of coronavirus, it is important that we look for that Australian Made logo to back our local manufacturers and support Australian jobs.

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