Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to recognise the longevity and success of the worldwide renowned Australian Made, Australian Grown logo. Without a doubt, it's Australia's most trusted, most recognised and most widely used country-of-origin symbol. Today it is used to brand not only Australian made products but also Australian produce, seafood and many other things. It's used by more than 2,600 businesses on over 16,000 products that are sold in Australia and exported to markets around the world. It almost has a 100 per cent consumer recognition rate. That is a true mark of success.

What breaks my heart is the fact that we are making fewer and fewer things here in Australia. In the 1950s, manufacturing accounted for 29 per cent of Australia's GDP, more than a quarter. Forty years on, reduced by global economic changes and government policies, manufacturing accounts for less than 10 per cent of Australian GDP, the lowest level since the early colonial times. In a great blow to our country and our workers, in 2017, car manufacturing ceased in Australia with the closure of the Adelaide Holden plant and other plants around the country. These capabilities and skills, once lost, are very difficult to rebuild.

As the Leader of the Opposition stated in his budget reply speech:

Australia is at a crossroad. It's not of our choosing, but the choices we make could change everything. This is an opportunity to reset and renew.

… I want a country that makes things and that creates wealth and shares it.

We want a future made in Australia, with a focus on building local manufacturing and local products, value-adding to our products and selling to the world. We are still in the middle of the worst health and economic crisis that we've ever witnessed in our lifetimes. This will give us the chance to reset. It will be a waste of what Australia has to offer if we remain the last link in a worldwide supply chain.

We have all the ingredients—the skills, the smarts, the people and the industry—to make things right here, sell them on a global market and create jobs, local jobs, for people here in Australia. But the ingredient that is missing is the will from governments to grow our manufacturing industry. We need a government that's willing to mobilise resources, we need a strong job-creation strategy and we need to produce more products with that stamp and that label, which is an approval for most Australians, who are more likely to buy a product with the Australian Made logo on it. That's because it offers security—it offers a product where you know that it's been made here, that the money that's spent on it remains in the country—and it produces jobs, one of the most important things that we as legislators can do to benefit the economy of this nation. So we need a good strong job-creation strategy, and we need to train and skill our population so we can be at the cutting edge of making things.

With many of the products that you see on the supermarket shelves—food products, for example—when you see that logo, it gives you the confidence that that product has come under the standards of our country, standards which are very high, compared to many other nations, and it gives people the confidence to buy that product and confidently know what products have been used in it. It is a great logo; it's a logo that we don't want to lose. We just want to see more products getting that stamp of approval as an Australian-made product.

I would go a step further and actually introduce a logo for perhaps a service in Australia as well. We have different service industries that are offshoring a lot of their service work. For example, banks, insurance companies and even accountants are sending their auditing work overseas to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, China and a whole range of places. Why not have a logo as well for 'serviced in Australia', so people, when they're signing their contract with their insurance company, their bank or another service industry, know that the work that will be done on their product they've just purchased will be done here in Australia? They'll have the confidence, just as we have the confidence when we buy a product and we know exactly what's in it.

So I support this motion. I think all of us should be doing absolutely everything we can to get more products with this logo on it.

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