Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, okay, I've got that. I am going to quote myself. Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons used to quote himself, so I will be that guy for a moment. In my first speech to this parliament, I talked about the future of Australian manufacturing and said: 'If we are going to succeed, the story of manufacturing has to be like, will be like, the story of agriculture over 100 years. We will see greater investment in technology, more mechanisation.' We want to climb the value chain, value-add to our natural resources, the raw products. It will mean higher skilled jobs, higher wage jobs but fewer jobs overall, more productivity. That is the future we want to chase—high wage, secure, good, well-paid, skilled jobs.

We can't compete with the low-wage countries. That is not where we want to go. We want to climb that value chain across the globe. That is future success and that is exactly what this bill is about. It will provide finance, including loans, guarantees and equity to drive investments in seven priority areas in Australian manufacturing. It will be loans, guarantees and equity, not grants, modelled on the very successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an initiative of the former Rudd-Gillard government. Oh, it was Tony Abbott's mob actually, wasn't it, who tried to get rid of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? Thank goodness they could not get through the Senate because it is still there today and it has made record investments into clean energy, stimulated new investments in new technology and has gone some way—one of the few things that was working under that mob—to lowering our emissions.

The seven priority areas include: value adding to resources; value adding in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors; unlocking potential and value-adding to raw materials like food processing, textiles, clothing, food manufacturing; developing capabilities in transport manufacturing and supply chains—cars, trains, shipbuilding are all important in so many other states and territories; medical science—leveraging our world-leading research. You know about this, Deputy Speaker Freelander, from your life as a renowned medical specialist, teacher and researcher. It is about providing essential supplies such as medical devices, PPE, medicines and vaccines. We can say 'PPE' post the pandemic, and people know what it is because we learned as a country that we need to make that stuff here and not rely on other countries when a crisis happens. We're too vulnerable to supply shocks. We're too vulnerable, frankly, to military blockades should the worst happen, because we don't make enough basic stuff here. It's urgent.

On renewables and low-emission technologies, we almost got an admission from the former speaker in his reasonable voice. He almost admitted that renewable energy might be the cheapest form of new power. We will take that as a baby step forward from the nuclear brigade over there. We might get two steps backwards today as they go on their nuclear tour of world disaster sites with Uncle Ted over there and his home-made videos.

Defence capability is so important—a lesson from Ukraine. You've got to make the consumables of war. You've got to be able, at the very least, to maintain, repair and sustain the platforms and capabilities that you do have—you can't make all the big, new, shiny stuff here—and all the enabling capabilities such as engineering, data science, software development, artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum.

So get with the program. I say to the opposition: have a serious look at the challenges we face and back this. Maybe they object to the fact that it's not a slush fund. Whenever they hear 'fund', their little eyes light up from their time in government. 'Oh, how can we rort this? How can we distribute this to all the Liberal marginal seats? We did a good job with the congestion fund, didn't we?' Apparently, congestion only happens in Liberal electorates. That's why you put 83 per cent of the congestion fund into Liberal-held electorates. Maybe that's the issue: they're worried that Labor will fairly distribute this. Well, they're not going to be decisions made by politicians. They will be made by an independent board. You could learn from that.

In closing, I say to the opposition and the Greens: get with the program. Back Australian manufacturing. I say in particular to the Greens political party: don't vote with the Liberals all the time. Don't team up with the Liberals. Back Australian manufacturing and support this bill.

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