Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) | Hansard source

That was an utterly shameless display from industry minister No. 7½—he's not No. 8, because he wasn't given the full job to focus on; it was split with energy. And he's not even paying attention, because he couldn't give that speech one month ago, where he was talking about different projects and rattling off the money that they're worth. He couldn't do it a month ago, he couldn't do it two months ago and he couldn't do it three months ago. He's talking about a program, which we support—the Modern Manufacturing Initiative—that was announced in October 2020. It was announced with fanfare, and it was announced with funding of $1.5 billion.

But guess what? Up until February, only $85 million of a $1.5 billion scheme was actually out the door. And we had said, last year, that they were holding back the announcements, that they were going to turn this into a slush fund. We'd seen it with sports rorts, with road rorts, with the regional funding rorts and with car park rorts, and now they were doing it with something as important to the economy as manufacturing. But they said: 'No, no, no; that won't happen—not at all. No, Labor's got it all wrong. Why are they so critical of us doing this to support manufacturing?'

Then the industry minister turns up in South Australia to make an announcement that he's going to support the space industry—and it was purely coincidence that it was mentioned just a week or two before the South Australian state election! There it was, all of a sudden, and then suddenly we got this announcement on steel, and we got these other announcements on space—because, as is always the case with this government, it's not about doing the right thing for everyone else; it's about doing the right thing for them. It's about turning taxpayer dollars into a slush fund so they can then go and rattle off all these announcements, so they can go and get media coverage after media coverage after media coverage.

Why is this a bad thing? It's inherently a good thing to have that money invested in manufacturing. When they did announce it, a lot of people cheered it on. But it didn't take too long for industry to come back and ask us, 'Why has it taken so long to make a decision?' They won't say it publicly, because they're scared witless that this vindictive, mean government will target them and not support their application. But you should be putting the money in earlier. As the deputy leader rightly pointed out, when the pandemic hit and we were struck, we had to rethink the nation. We couldn't get the things we needed or wanted in time. Countries all over the globe are rethinking manufacturing, and this mob decides, 'We're not going to rebuild at the earliest opportunity; we're going to rebuild at the best opportunity electorally for us'—which is just wrong. They're always late, they always underdeliver, but they're always on time for an announcement that suits them. And that is plain wrong.

We on this side know that manufacturing is an important component of the Australian economy. Australians get that we should be a country that makes things, because that's a sign of economic health. It's also, importantly, a sign of a good, secure nation that can get the things that it needs at the time that it needs them. When we are dead-last among OECD countries in manufacturing self-sufficiency, that is not a healthy sign. And it's not a good sign when the jobs contract, which we've seen, or when only 67 per cent of what we use is being manufactured in this nation.

All those big announcements—and just to restate it: between October 2020 and February 2022 the Morrison-Joyce government committed $292 million out of the $1.5 billion MMS at an average of $583,000 a day, and last week they announced, via The Australian, that they'd committed $925.7 million. That means that in the 38 days since 14 February they've committed $633 million of the MMS—not in time for the economy but in time for them. That is an absolute disgrace.

On our side, manufacturing is not a fad; it is a fact of life. So many of us have families that owe jobs to manufacturing. We represent communities where manufacturing is a big deal. It means something. It is not a slogan. It's not something where you just jump up one day and try to create some sort of news—like we had with industry minister No. 7½. We believe that Australia can make things, we believe it should make things, but it should not have to tolerate a government turning manufacturing into a plaything.

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