Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022, a bill that the opposition will, indeed, oppose. It's a bill that fails to support the manufacturing and industry sectors on the ground across the north-west, the west coast and King Island in the great state of Tasmania. In the electorate of Braddon, you'll find the most practical, pragmatic, hardworking people in small business anywhere in the country. Our region is the engine room of Tasmania, and that engine is driven by our fantastic small business sector—by mum-and-dad businesses working hard. We punch well above our weight when it comes to the contribution to the state and the nation's wealth.

There's one thing that practical enterprising people hate more than anything else, and that is bureaucracy. Big government inserting themselves into their lives, their livelihoods, their businesses and the way they go about their work every day is their biggest frustration, when there's no reason for this intervention in the first place.

On this side, we firmly believe in and steadfastly stand on the side of the individual. We celebrate initiative and personal responsibility. We know that our nation was built on the back of our enterprising mums and dads, our small businesses and our small to medium sized enterprises. We know that our SMEs are strangled by senseless oversight and bureaucracy. They never reach their full potential because of this bureaucratic burden. Bureaucracy is slow and unresponsive, and modern businesses can't afford to be slow and unresponsive if they are to compete in a competitive global environment.

Standing in this place, I feel ashamed telling our manufacturers and our industry that the Albanese government has introduced yet another piece of legislation that will make their life more difficult and make their life harder, not easier. This National Reconstruction Fund is described by the Albanese government as a funding opportunity. All I can see is that this fund is a source of endless frustration for practical small businesses. There have been more phone calls to my office, asking me: 'What on earth is this government doing now? What were they thinking?'

It was only a few months ago that I was standing in this very place, speaking against the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This was a bill that took away the gains that we've made in the workplace over many decades, a bill that took us back to the old dark days of industry-led government intervention and back to the time of the previous Labor governments, who sold their soul to their union masters, a bill that unfairly targeted our small mum-and-dad businesses and a bill that took control away from small business and put it back in the hands of Labor's union masters.

And here I am again! Here I am again on a different day, at a different time and speaking on a different bill, but, yes, it's the same old story. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, you know what they say. Providing what industry requires at any time is our responsibility as government. In typical style, this bill's underlying assumption is that the Albanese government knows what's best for small business. This is something that they are demonstrating time and time again in this place. It beggars belief that you would implement $15 billion worth of financing in that mechanism to drive investment without genuinely consulting industry on the ground.

Let's take our world-class forestry sector, for example. The NRF does not alter in one way the landscape or improve the opportunities for this sector. This includes our native regrowth industry, of which Tasmania leads the nation. Our leading forestry industry bodies such as AFPA, the Australian Forest Products Association, and AFCA, the Australian Forest Contractors Association, work hard on behalf of world's-best-practice industry, and they support and underpin their forestry-sponsored industry workers and businesses in the wood fibre industry. I was pleased that AFPA and AFCA made a submission to the NRF consultation process and outlined the real story on the ground.

The issues that they've raised are just common sense to me and common sense to people on this side, but it's a shame that that common sense hasn't found its way to the land of the bureaucrat and to this big-government approach to small business. If their submission had landed in the world of the real people, they might have had a fighting chance. Their submission basically noted: 'Our timber processing facilities are limited in the investment that they can justify due to a shortage of wood fibre supply. This shortage is being exacerbated by some state governments and their move to shut down native forestry. In turn, this impacts on potential returns for the investment of the Australian manufacturing side of sustainable timber products.' AFPA and AFCA want the Albanese government to at least try to understand, at least try to listen. Our forestry industry is crucial when it comes to our renewable future. It's crucial to our renewable jobs, our resilience and affordable housing strategies, but it is being held back by a government and that government's inaction and militant attacks on this enterprise. But what's this government's solution to this? They're planning to add another layer of complexity and bureaucracy on top of all of that.

Unlike Labor, I believe in a world with more boots and less suits. This gets back to what I said earlier. The last things that we need for our environmentally responsible, sustainable, safe and professional forestry industry are more bureaucrats, more rules, more bureaucracy, more government and more union involvement. This won't get the logs out. That won't help our young contractors pay those payments every month. It won't put families who work in the industry at the forefront of their own destiny. In an industry which in Tasmania often is run by small businesses and families, these are generational businesses that are handed from father to son, from mother to daughter. So again I ask: what is the National Reconstruction Fund going to do for them? I think it will be zip, nada, nil. I think the government didn't consult, didn't listen or didn't act on the advice that industry peak bodies, like AFPA and like AFCA, raised in this question.

The question remains, after all of that: who are they listening to? I must admit I read with interest the extensive list of stakeholders that the government did consult in drafting this piece of legislation. This included Austrade, and I accept that this is an appropriate stakeholder. The next 15 on the list are all federal departments: the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; the Department of Finance—the list goes on and on. I ask: where's the consultation with industry on the ground—the manufacturers, the welders, the log truck drivers, the dozer drivers, the mums and dads who are going about their business every day? Where's their consultation? If one is to develop a funding opportunity that aims to boost investment in manufacturing, to create jobs, to grow local capacity and to rebuild Australia's industrial base, then I reckon a great place to start would be to start listening to the people on the ground, the ones that really matter. It beggars belief to me! But, true to form, this government has hand-picked a small cohort of their mates, asking them to contribute to the design of this bill. It will come as no surprise to anybody who got an invite to the table—the Australian Council of Trade Unions; the former Labor cabinet minister Anna Bligh, who leads the Australian Banking Association; Industry Super Australia. The list goes on and on. It was a big get-together.

We all know that unions largely underwrote the Albanese government's election victory. They spent $37 million in donations on campaign materials and election advertising, of which $16 million was paid directly to the Labor Party. We also know that there's no such thing as a free donation—or a free lunch, for that matter—and it seems the national reconstruction corporation is a payday for that union movement. One-third of the corporation's board positions will be hand-picked by the Council of Trade Unions. In effect, that means that the trade union movement will choose who gets the funding and who doesn't. Alarmingly, an enterprise agreement with the unions is a pre-condition to even making an application. You wonder why we're upset on this side. You wonder why we're against this. They are demanding that applicants commit to direct employment, and, if contractors or indirect workforces are used, then they must be employed on the same conditions as the direct workforce. This essentially enshrines compulsory unionism into any and every workplace that wishes to apply for these funds.

I'm standing up for my local manufacturing sector. I'm standing up for those mums and dads that go about their business every day. I'm standing up for those forestry workers that go to work, trying to get those logs out into that sector every day. I'm standing up for industry on the ground. I'm standing up for the battler. It's an exciting time for industry, as we're seeing many emerging opportunities, but the sector is also facing significant and ongoing intermediate challenges.

I'm out and about every day, onsite, talking to business owners. They're telling me they have three major challenges. Firstly, the cost of energy. Secondly, workforce shortages: they're finding it difficult to get employees. And, thirdly, the disrupted supply chains, which really impede on their cost of doing business. These are the three things that we want government to support them with right now, but the Albanese government have turned their backs on them and are focusing on scrapping the former government's funding programs and putting bureaucratic, union-led programs in their place.

Industry should know that I'm always on their side. They know that I'll fight for them in this place and remind government of the importance of our local manufacturing sector and industrial sector. I'll remind the government that industry must be free and agile and as unencumbered to bureaucracy as possible in order for those small businesses to maintain profitable. And—here's a news flash—I'll remind all those on the other side that governments and bureaucrats don't create jobs. It's our enterprising mum-and-dad and small and medium sized business sectors that create jobs, and that's why the opposition will be opposing the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022.

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