Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Are they serious? I'm astounded. The member for Lindsay, with her pathetic jokes about manufacturing, the member for Groom with his talking points and spin—since your mob took office way back eight years ago, when Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, do you know how many jobs have been lost in Australian manufacturing? Ninety thousand. That's a fact. So all the spin, obfuscation and distortion will not hide that fact.

More than that: as the member for Chifley pointed out, you dared manufacturing to leave this country, and they did. Last year, during COVID-19, at the height of the pandemic, your own department of industry also showed that 50,000 jobs were lost in Australian manufacturing. That is 50,000 just last year. And there's more. For Australian manufacturing workers the budget papers forecast a cut to real wages of $7,800. That's the record of this coalition government on jobs and manufacturing. You can't hide from that record. As the member for Chifley has pointed out correctly, it's a record of neglect.

You know why it's neglect? Because they really don't care. They don't care about local manufacturing. They don't care about manufacturing jobs. They don't care about manufacturing workers and their families. You know what they do care about? Themselves and their own jobs.

In my own electorate of Wills the impact has been severe. Hundreds of manufacturing workers lost their jobs in the north of my electorate when the Broadmeadows Ford factory closed in 2016 in the member for Calwell's electorate. This was after the coalition and the former Treasurer arrogantly goaded and encouraged the death of auto manufacturing in this country. We all saw it. Whatever spin you put out in this MPI, we all saw it. It's there for posterity, for history to see. Many of the workers lost their jobs after a career dedicated to the industry. They were forced into early retirement and they weren't easily able to retrain for something else after so many years in the industry. For many people it was their last job, and the factory closing meant that early retirement.

It also meant relying on government support when they never had to before. It meant financial uncertainty for them and their families. It meant the loss of technical skills, built up over decades, and know-how in our country. And it also meant the loss of small and medium-sized enterprises, many in my electorate of Wills, that supplied the auto industry with parts and different bits and pieces. All that was shut down and lost; those people and those skills were lost. We have a proud manufacturing history in my electorate. But now, all too often, I drive past old and disused factories—a block of apartments going up where the factory was—and it's a reminder of what has changed and of the jobs and skills that we have lost because of this government.

With COVID-19 impacting global supply chains, making things here in Australia is more than just a talking point. It has never been more critical, to our jobs and to our national interest. That includes manufacturing that can help us out during this pandemic, like local manufacturing of mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and so on. The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology—I think it was the member for McPherson at the time—said in October 2020 that it would take nine to 12 months for us to be able to manufacture that kind of vaccine here in Australia. That was in October, eight months ago. What have they been doing? Have they been preparing the talking points for this MPI and the spin? Eight months of work on that hasn't yielded much of a result, not from what I've heard from the last few speeches.

This government doesn't make long-term plans. It has no vision. When it comes to investing in what our country needs, when it comes to local manufacture for things like COVID-19 vaccines, the Morrison government has spent $5.9 million more on consultant fees than on mRNA vaccine manufacture. That's where their priorities lie. Unlike this government, federal Labor has a vision. We care about manufacturing workers. We care about making things in this country. That's why we're going to actually invest in it and not just talk about it. A future Labor government will implement policies that will retrain and retool workers, provide vocational education, establish job creation programs and revive Australian manufacturing. (Time expired)

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