Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to begin by making some observations about some community groups in Fraser that are led by youth and are producing great benefits for other youth, who are often in a very vulnerable situation.

The first organisation that I'd like to make mention of is the Tigrayan Youth Association. There are approximately 5,000 members of the Tigrayan community in Victoria and many of those individuals live in Fraser. Last November, I attended the Tigrayan exhibition at Parliament House in Canberra. It was a very deeply moving experience, in which there was photographic evidence and a range of cultural artefacts that paid tribute to the suffering of many individuals and communities in Tigray. They indicated not just the incredible suffering of people in that part of the world due to a long and ongoing civil war but the fact that so many people in my electorate and the community around Melbourne's north-west are suffering as well. This is, in part, because so many people either know of what their relatives and friends are going through in Tigray or, often, don't know what people are going through or whether they are okay. It's a very deeply disturbing situation.

The Tigrayan Youth Association organised a three-day event, in my electorate, which showcased the vibrant culture of that part of the world. It was a very uplifting event. It included a performance showing courtship all the way through to marriage, universal experiences, and it was very moving and at times amusing. It included shared stories from their elders in a documentary called Tarek Time. It also included a soccer tournament and a wellness seminar.

Despite the stress that so many people in that community are feeling, it was incredible to see the positivity with which those young people came together. As with any event of its size, it would have taken many countless hours of volunteers and people on the committee of the Tigrayan Youth Association to successfully bring that event to fruition. What struck me was that so many young people were taking the initiative to help people in my electorate, the Fraser community, but, more broadly, across Melbourne. I'm sure that people back in their homeland are benefiting also from the positive efforts that young people in my electorate are undertaking. That's one example.

Another example is Endeavour Youth Australia. I congratulate the efforts of the entire organisation and the committee that puts in so much time. But I single out Mohamed Semra, who was a nominee for the Victorian Young Australian of the Year and also received the Victoria Young Voltaire Human Rights Award.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 18:23 to 18:33

So, I was speaking about Mohamed Semra and his role in Endeavour Youth Australia. Mohamed Semra is somebody who became famous in 2015 when a video that he had created went viral. It was a video of himself and a number of his friends, all of African descent, I might say, who were denied entry into an Apple store, presumably because they were under suspicion, notwithstanding the fact that there was no evidence. The video in fact went so viral that Apple's CEO Tim Cook apologised and called it unacceptable. And stores around the world, starting in Australia, engaged in retraining as a result of the consciousness-raising exercise that Mohamed had led. This was, according to Mohamed, an everyday experience, but he used his initiative to make it a positive, and he created a network where a lot of his friends, and people that he then became associated with, became advocates against racism, particularly towards young African-Australians.

The organisation that he then helped to create and put so much energy into now undertakes so many positive activities, such as activities in schools to help young people deal with the unconscious biases that so often affect them. They also create sporting events, and, indeed, I was recently at a futsal tournament, which Endeavour Youth Australia had helped to organise. It was a wonderful event, an incredibly vibrant event. As I was presenting the winning women's team with the trophy, I said to those in attendance that it felt like it was the final of the World Cup, given that it had gone into extra time. A very, very exciting overtime led to a deserving winner, but both teams certainly deserved a trophy. It was a remarkable feat of athleticism, fair play and competitiveness.

It was a really positive day, where a couple of dozen teams of young girls and boys, from right around Melbourne's west, competed, and it was an example to me, again, of young people taking the initiative and creating something very positive. I know, from having talked to people at that event and at other events that the organisation has organised, that it has provided a lot of support for kids who often find themselves very isolated.

I also wanted to talk about the National Reconstruction Fund and to talk about, in particular, the ways in which it's going to affect and benefit the communities of Melbourne's west and north, communities that have historically relied so much on manufacturing. I think it's worth noting the broader context which motivated the creation of the National Reconstruction Fund. It's one of the principal election commitments in the economic space that we took to the last election, and which was so resoundingly supported by the community. If you look at Australia's economic history over recent decades, there has been a long-term decline in manufacturing as a share of GDP. This is something which a number of advanced economies have experienced, but it's certainly one of the important pieces of context.

The other piece of context that I think is relevant is that, like a lot of advanced economies, Australia has seen a hollowing out, in a number of sectors, of jobs with what you might call 'middle skills'. This has created a gap in secure, well-paid jobs that used to exist decades ago in our economy, but which are increasingly not there. I would say that another trend and very important motivator for the National Reconstruction Fund—it's another long-term trend that the Australian economy has experienced—is that we are much better at basic research. We are much better at the early-stage aspects of research than we are at commercialisation. This has meant that we've lost a lot of opportunities in the manufacturing sector, in particular, for businesses that have a great idea and that have innovated, to take it from a small venture to the next level, to the level where it's on a global scale, where it's exporting and where it's creating hundreds or thousands of jobs. We have some examples of companies that have managed to bridge that divide—CSL, Cochlear and there are others—but, when you look right across manufacturing, it has remained an issue that we have struggled to deal with.

Then there are some shorter-term issues that, in opposition, we grappled with from a policy perspective, but which also contributed to the rationale for the National Reconstruction Fund. One issue was that supply chains were hit very hard by COVID, and it made Australia, but also a lot of other small and medium economies, think hard about their economic resilience. There were many products that we weren't able to produce for ourselves at short notice. There was some greater flexibility over the medium term, but there were a number of things that we couldn't produce for ourselves at short notice, which highlighted the vulnerability that our economy felt.

Also related to COVID, but probably also a trend that has accelerated after COVID, is what you might call the decoupling or the derisking of supply chains around the world, where different kinds of products with particularly complicated supply chains are now seeing different supply chains emerge, so that there isn't a single supply chain and risk factor there, particularly with some products in light of global international relations concerns or security concerns. That's another trend which has made it even more imperative for Australia to think about the resilience of our supply chains and why the National Reconstruction Fund is so important.

The other issue that I think is critical is that we are at a junction, as an economy, where it is critical that we do better when it comes to value add. Some people talk about this in terms of the complexity of our economy and, in particular, our manufacturing sector—our manufacturing sector or our advanced manufacturing sector. I think about it also in terms of productivity growth. What I would like to see is the National Reconstruction Fund help to drive productivity growth in the manufacturing sector in particular, and more broadly. Paul Krugman once said, 'Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it's almost everything.' I look at the National Reconstruction Fund in that context as well.

There are a range of rationales and policy underpinnings of the National Reconstruction Fund. We have manufacturing in need of more support. We have manufacturing not doing as much as it could, both for our economy and our society when it comes to commercialisation. And, post-COVID, we have a real need to boost the resilience of our economy—both from an economic perspective but also from a national security perspective. This will add to our resilience but—I am confident—it will also add to our productively growth over the long run, which is so important to wages growth and so important to our standard of living.

The National Reconstruction Fund is being debated in this building right at this moment, and we have a situation where the opposition and the Greens are threatening to not support this. I want to speak about the importance of this for Fraser. Indeed, there are a number of businesses in Fraser that, to me, highlight the importance of this and highlight why it's important for everyday workers and why it's so important for giving them greater opportunities in the workplace.

One example is Luus Industries, which I visited in June 2022, shortly after the election, with Senator Tim Ayres, the Assistant Minister for Manufacturing. This is a company that's been around for about 25 years. I think this year might be their 25th anniversary. It employs 65 people in my electorate. It manufactures professional industrial kitchen equipment for restaurants and hotels right around the country. It has gone through significant growth in recent years. It uses very innovative manufacturing and design, and is an example of a company that does make very high-end and high-quality industrial kitchen equipment, but is also involved in the design. So it's that end-to-end manufacturing that it embodies. I might say that, when I did visit that company, celebrity chef Adam Liaw was there as part of the Australia Made campaign and managed to cook something at very short notice, which was very dramatic and made it onto television. Luus Industries is an example of a company that has done so well, and it is an example of a company where one wonders how much blue sky there is. If it were to be given assistance through the National Reconstruction Fund, how much more could be achieved?

Another one in the advanced manufacturing space is Bell Environmental, which I visited in February 2021, with the now Minister for Industry and Science. This is a company based in North Sunshine. It originally started as a small pump service business in 1964. It's been around for a long time and has a very, very strong and proven track record. It's about to celebrate its 60th anniversary next year. It's a designer and manufacturer of emergency response vehicles, such as SES vehicles and fire trucks. With the closure of manufacturing plants like Ford, Bell Environmental has taken on many manufacturing workers across Melbourne's west and is an example of how companies like Bell, manufacturing in the advanced manufacturing space, can give people the opportunity as Australia moves up the value chain.

These are two examples of companies that fit within the remit of the National Reconstruction Fund. If you look at the priority areas of the National Reconstruction Fund, you see renewables and low emissions technologies; medical science; transport; value-add in agricultural, forestry and fisheries; value-add in resources; defence capability; and enabling capabilities. It demonstrates how much potential there is for this fund. Enabling companies to grow, giving them access to capital where it otherwise might not have arisen, gives you a sense of how much potential there is for this to produce benefits right across the economy, in particular in an electorate like mine, where there are opportunities for jobs right across the skills spectrum and the opportunity for people to learn skills on the job and to have career progression.

Manufacturing has always been important in the electorate of Fraser, in the community that it represents. Indeed, my electorate office is located in the historic suburb of Sunshine, where the key Harvester High Court decision on a living wage was prompted by the Sunshine Harvester Works in 1906. That manufacturing plant was one of the largest manufacturing plants in Australia at the time and was a world-leading manufacturer of that type of equipment. The High Court decision, of course, laid the foundations of a lot of the thinking and policy around a basic living wage and what it meant to have a decent industrial relations system, which has remained in this country, fortunately, for decades since that time. It remains one of the underpinnings of why, for people who have low-skill or low-wage jobs, our industrial relations system provides them with a decent living standard and decent, secure conditions at work. We must always remember that we need to put act those key humane, fair underpinnings of our system.

A Harvester Oration occurs every year. It was actually started by my colleague Tim Watts, the member for Gellibrand, when the Harvester site was in his seat. Boundary changes have since meant that it's now in Fraser, but we jointly host that each year. I was very pleased that Senator Katy Gallagher was able to deliver the Harvester Oration this year. She gave an absolutely wonderful speech about gender inequality and also spoke about some of the key priorities this government has in industrial relations, harking back to the Harvester decision and how some of its key tenets of fairness remain so important today.

The Harvester Oration has been around for a few years now, and I note that earlier deliverers of the oration include Anthony Albanese, now the Prime Minister, of course; and Bill Kelty; and Wayne Swan. So it has a storied past, and we were very lucky to have Katy Gallagher deliver that this year. It's been eight months of this government, and we have prioritised much-needed industrial relations reforms, which have delivered really important protections for people in giving them more secure work.

The National Reconstruction Fund, as I said, is something that I think is timely for the manufacturing sector and all of the related areas that the National Reconstruction Fund will touch: manufacturing but also our defence industry, our clean tech industry—all of these different parts of our economy will benefit from this fund. It is very timely in terms of both the long-term trends that our economy is experiencing with the need for us to do better at commercialisation and offering people opportunities right up and down the skills profile and also to build a more resilient post COVID economy. So I'll be very glad to see that initiative pass both chambers, hopefully, this week.

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