Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Riverina goes straight to the top of the class again: the unions. The changes that are happening now mean that you can be a manufacturing business going about your business and running successfully. Your employees are happy. And who can trot in the door now? The trade unions. Once again, this government is looking after their union mates at the expense of manufacturing businesses.

We all know that unions have a role to play. The trouble is that the government thinks that role should be all-encompassing when it comes to running a manufacturing business, and that is not what this nation needs at the moment. We need flexible workplaces. We do not need workplaces which are regulated beyond an inch of their life, where on any day a union official can walk in the door and change the very nature of that business overnight.

What do you think a Future Made in Australia Bill, if it was not just a marketing headline but had real substance, would do? It would look at reducing regulation for manufacturing businesses across this nation. It would look to reduce red tape. This is something that the member for Riverina knows and understands well, because he's a former minister for small business. He knows and understands the importance of getting rid of regulation. He's a business owner as well.

Why is regulation strangling manufacturing businesses right across this nation? Because it means that the people who run these businesses are spending their whole time petrified about the regulatory burden that they face and about complying with that regulation, rather than getting on with running their manufacturing business. Can I say to those opposite: please, once again, look at what you're doing to these businesses. See what you can do to take the regulatory tax burden away from them and what you can do to take away the regulatory burden when it comes to work health and safety. Look at what you can do to take the regulatory burden away when it comes to ensuring that they aren't facing, once again, burden after burden when it comes to compliance in every single form. If you can do that then manufacturing businesses in this country will have a chance.

Do you know what else you need to do? You need to make sure you have a tax system which incentivises these businesses to make a profit, to reinvest that profit back into their businesses and to grow their businesses, so that we can, once again in this country, see small businesses becoming medium-sized businesses and medium-sized businesses becoming large businesses. All you are doing at the moment through your tax system is taking away any incentive for these businesses to grow.

Why is it important that we have affordable and reliable energy, flexible workplaces, less regulation and an incentive-based tax system? It's important because it means that manufacturing businesses can flourish. Why is it important that manufacturing businesses can flourish? Because if they don't, we're not making things here in Australia. And, as we saw during the pandemic, if we're not making things here we are leaving ourselves vulnerable. We have to be able to make things here.

The way you make things here is twofold. First of all, you have to be able to make things here so that you can sell them in the domestic market. Then, usually as you grow, you want to be able to sell not only in your domestic market but also in your international market. If manufacturing businesses here in Australia aren't competitive, they aren't able to do that. You have to be competitive. If you're not, what happens is that those who manufacture overseas are able to get their products into Australia at a more competitive rate and that puts pressure on our manufacturing businesses here. Our manufacturers who have grown things and who are exporting all of a sudden can't compete because others can compete and provide the products and goods at a better price than they can. So you have to be competitive.

The ultimate question that needs to be asked about this bill is: does it make our manufacturing businesses here in Australia more competitive? The sad reality is that the answer is no. That is why the government needs to take it back to the drawing board and start again.

I have some very, very good, competitive manufacturing businesses in my wonderful electorate of Wannon. There are some wonderful ones, whether it comes to manufacturing parts to go in Kenworth trucks and to go in Bushmaster vehicles, whether it comes to food manufacturing in the red meat industry and the dairy industry or whether it comes to manufacturing for wind towers which are used in wind farms for renewable energy. I have a wide variety of manufacturing in my wonderful electorate of Wannon. These wonderful manufacturing businesses tell me time and time again that they want the cost of doing business reduced. As a matter of fact, they are saying that there is a cost-of-doing-business crisis. Those are the large manufacturing businesses.

I also have a lot of small manufacturing businesses in my electorate, and they are right across the economy as well. They might be in metal fabrication. They might be in the building industry making trusses for small homes et cetera. Right across the board, they are manufacturing some of the most diverse things that you would see right across our economy. What are those smaller manufacturing businesses saying to me as well? They are saying, 'Please reduce our costs.' Why is it so important that the cost of doing business is reduced in this country? It's because, if we don't reduce the cost of doing business, business has no alternative but to pass those costs on. What happens when they pass those costs on? The consumer has to pay more, and that adds to the consumer's cost-of-living crisis.

I say to the government, 'You have to address inflation and you have to address it now.' We've got ourselves in this vicious circle where the cost of doing business is going up and that is passed on to the consumer. So the cost of living is going up, and we end up with a cost-of-living crisis and a cost-of-doing-business crisis. What we're seeing from the government is a hopelessness and a haplessness in addressing this, the like of which we have never seen. You're starting to make Gough Whitlam look good. You have to be able to deal with inflation. I don't think that I've heard from a single business that hasn't found the current operating environment worse than the GFC, worse than the Asian financial crisis and worse than any other time that they have faced in the last two, three or four decades. They are saying times are as tough as they have ever, ever been.

I will conclude with this: Does this bill make our manufacturing businesses more competitive? Does it help them address the cost-of-doing-business crisis? Does it mean that the cost-of-living crisis will be addressed because the cost of doing business will be addressed? No, it doesn't. Those opposite are always smug and smart and they got together and they thought: 'We've got a bill and all it will do is make things ultimately tougher for business and tougher for the consumer. What will we call it? We'll call it the "Future Made in Australia Bill".' Well, I think all of us can agree on one thing in this House—that that title basically means that there won't be a future made in Australia. As a matter of fact, if this government continues in office, there will be no future for manufacturing in this country in the short to medium period. That will be a travesty because it will mean that our country is less prepared to face the challenges that it will need to face into the future.

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