Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's absolutely fantastic that the member for Chifley has given me, as his neighbour, the opportunity to outdo him on manufacturing. The evidence is in the numbers. On the page I have here, the member for Chifley has been working so hard for manufacturers in his community that he is at the bottom of the list of the number of manufacturers that he's been fighting for in his community for all the time he has been the member for Chifley. I'm very proud to say that Lindsay, next door, has over three times more manufacturers. We are fighting hard for local manufacturers in Western Sydney. So again I thank the member for Chifley for giving me the opportunity to make him feel a bit silly.

We do have wonderful manufacturers in Western Sydney. Baker & Provan are in St Marys, just on the border of Chifley, not too far away. We are working hard for them. They have some great Defence contracts. We have Custom Denning also in St Marys, a fantastic local manufacturer who are working on Australia's first electric bus. That's a great Lindsay manufacturer. SpanSet in Emu Plains manufacture safety harnesses for the construction industry. Grant Engineered in Penrith are another great manufacturer who manufacture truck body parts, and they are doing a wonderful job. Also we have J Sinclair Engineering and one of my favourite manufacturers in the community because they work really hard. They are headed up by a woman who manufactures windows.

We have so many local manufacturers across Western Sydney, and the message I am hearing from them is that they are getting backed by the Morrison government and they feel really positive about the policies that we have in place. During the coronavirus pandemic I was one of the first off the blocks to say we need to really back our local manufacturers. I truly believe Western Sydney can be at the heart of a new era in manufacturing. We have so much investment coming in, particularly with the establishment of Western Sydney airport and the development of advanced manufacturing. That's what I'm working really hard for.

But it's not just me saying that our community in Western Sydney can be the heart of a new era in manufacturing. We have a survey that I established that went out across Western Sydney. This survey showed that our local people in Western Sydney are really behind Australian manufacturing and backing Aussie made. So our community feel it too. Absolutely when I speak out and about in the community they tell me that they truly do back Australian made. That means that what we in the Morrison government are doing is working.

One of the top priority areas for respondents in my survey was resources technology and critical minerals processing. That's a really important manufacturing component for people in Western Sydney, because our community knows how important our resources and critical minerals sector is and will continue to be, particularly after the coronavirus pandemic. This is a sector that has a strong track record in creating Australian jobs. For me, creating local jobs is absolutely important as we get through the coronavirus pandemic, with a huge focus on training our kids in the jobs of the future. So when we are talking about delivering, Member for Chifley, I'm delivering for my community of Lindsay by establishing a jobs of the future forum, bringing together our educators, our industry and our school teachers to work out how our kids can get those opportunities and the jobs that are coming with our focus on modern manufacturing. I've also established—the member for Chifley might be interested, because he might like to do this too in his own community—an Advancing Manufacturing Taskforce, again bringing the university, TAFE, industry and teachers together to work out how we can get the best opportunities when it comes to manufacturing.

So we're doing it in Lindsay. We're fighting for our local manufacturers but, most importantly, we're backing our local manufacturers to make sure that we get all the opportunities that are coming with the Morrison government's focus on modern manufacturing and our six priority areas. When I go out and about and speak to our local manufacturers, they're telling me that never before have they felt as backed as they do now.

See this speech in context