Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

by leave—I just wanted to acknowledge John Alexander, the Chair of the Infrastructure, Transport and Cities Committee, on the work of this inquiry and the previous inquiries. Your contribution to this place in this role has been immense. You can be really proud of this report.

I want to also acknowledge the other members of the committee but in particular the member for Forde of the government members of the committee. I really got a lot out of his contribution to our frequent meetings and to the journey that we went on during this inquiry. I want to thank the Labor members, my comrades—the member for Scullin, Andrew Giles; and the member for Lalor, Jo Ryan—for their support as well, as we move through the inquiries of this parliament but in particular with this inquiry that we are tabling today.

I want to join the member for Bennelong in thanking all the staff that supported us in this inquiry—Lachlan Wilson, the committee secretary; Sam Mannette, the inquiry secretary; Nicolette Cilia, a researcher; Ben Vea Vea, a researcher; Jazmine Rakic, the office manager; and everyone who was involved in bringing this report to be tabled today.

As I said, I think it is a fine work and, as the member for Bennelong said, the result of great bipartisan action in the national interest. That is what is required to happen more and more in this place if we are going to meet the challenges of our future. Government procurement, billions of dollars of taxpayer funds and also the funds that we're loading up future generations with in terms of debt must be used to make sure that our sovereign security is enhanced and strengthened. I think this report makes some very good recommendations. I won't go over the ground that the member for Bennelong has already covered, but those recommendations should be taken seriously by the incoming government after this upcoming election so that, in particular, Australian companies get a better go and we have cultures in our industry that mean that we get the most out of all Australians, not just the blokes in the 88 per cent that he mentioned.

I won't go through the recommendations in detail, but I did want to point to recommendation 6, which sees increasing access to Commonwealth funded projects for tier 2 and tier 3 companies and related Australian small and medium enterprises. That's how we will build the capacity of our nation to provide jobs for our own people but also to make sure that more taxpayer funds stay in Australian companies, developing them up through the tiers. We want to see more Australian tier 1 companies in the future so that more of our funds stay in the nation.

Again, to the member for Bennelong: I wish you all the best for your future. You've not only made a sterling contribution to our nation in sport; in this place, through previous inquiries, you have made a real difference in terms of opening people's eyes to how we can better fund our infrastructure, and, in this inquiry, to how we can make sure that the infrastructure that's funded by the Commonwealth has more benefit and strengthens the sovereignty of our industrial capacity in our country. I thank you very much.

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