House debates

Wednesday, 8 March 2023

Bills

National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022; Second Reading

4:37 pm

Photo of Luke HowarthLuke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in continuation on the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022. The modern manufacturing strategy accounted for a quarter of Australia's national research and development investment. We expanded and modernised Australia's sovereign manufacturing capability, secured supply chains and invested in the skills and world-class research our manufacturing businesses needed through the six priorities I listed before. Australian manufacturing helped keep our economy moving and Australians safe during the pandemic, producing medical equipment, securing supplies of fertiliser, keeping supermarket shelves stocked and increasing our defence force capabilities.

Under the coalition's modern manufacturing strategy, an additional 3,300 manufacturing businesses were created in Australia. Manufacturing turnover increased to its highest level since 2010. There was a bit of a fall-off in the last three years of the Gillard and Rudd governments, and then when we left office in 2022 it was right up there again. In fact, there were over a million jobs in manufacturing at the height of COVID. But the new Labor minister stated on this bill just yesterday that there are 900,000. Is that a 10 per cent drop since they came to office? Because there were over a million. More than 220,000 trade apprentices were also in training under the coalition. That's the most since records began back in 1963. We hear those opposite talking about TAFE and what they've done with it. They've been talking about TAFE for 30 years. The issue is—and the member for Barker would know—a lot of the TAFEs are empty. We brought in JobTrainer during COVID, which got a lot of people back into training, including those 220,000 people in trade apprenticeships. That will not only help the government but also the Australian people going forward. For example: as we know, there's a lot more housing stock which needs to be built. That nearly quarter of a million apprentices that the Liberal-National government got into training will go a really long way with that. And manufacturing represented a quarter of all merchandise exports under the Liberal-National government.

I'm proud of the strong manufacturing legacy of the former coalition government. We understand manufacturing in Australia. If Labor really wanted a win for our manufacturing industry, one that's economically sustainable and built upon our sovereign manufacturing industry, then building upon this legacy would have been a better strategy than the establishment of an entirely new National Reconstruction Fund that has its priorities wrong and threatens to weaken our manufacturing—plus they're spending $15 billion initially, $5 billion initially. It's off-budget—not even included in the budget. As I said before, the minister and the Prime Minister should have hit the ground running 10 months ago. They should have picked up the Modern Manufacturing Fund that we already had in place, and which is currently law. They should have picked up on that, rather than saying: 'Let's get rid of that; let's create something new and off-budget, with a whole lot of extra bureaucracy. And we'll reward our union friends.'

This is the thing. When talking about governing, right now I'm hearing, particularly in defence industry, that these people have been ignored. The minister has been missing in action for the last 10 months. He was contacting them all prior to the election; he was putting his hard hat and high-vis on. But now, guess what? When those same businesses that he visited try to call him or get an appointment with him he's nowhere to be seen. They can't see him and can't even get in to see his staff!

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