Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To complement and contribute to the government's productivity summit, I had the privilege of hosting the Western Australian Economic Roundtable on 12 August, together with the WA Deputy Premier, Rita Saffioti, and Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh. We had representatives from defence, science, TAFE, transport, local government, industry, community, manufacturing, health, AI, renewable energy, economics, mining, construction, universities, unions and agri-tech. We had a wealth of knowledge in the room, and their ideas and experiences were all brought to bear.

I want to place my thanks on the record to all the WA participants, including Nicole Matthews from WALGA, Dr Tarun Weeramanthri from UWA, Shannon O'Rourke from Powering Australia, Kathleen Wallace from TAFE, Philip Cardaci from the CFC Group, Alyce Hofmann-Fritz from Hofmann Engineering, Harry Burrows from the AWU, Brett Peek from Austal, Dr Andrew Ross from the CSIRO, Scott Woodward from Perth Airport, Nicholas Gan from PRL Group, Anita Logiudice from the WA Chamber of Mines and Energy, Paula Rogers and Matt Judkins from the Committee for Perth, Dr Alex Jenkins from the WA Data Science Innovation Hub, Danika Adams from CEDA, Rob Grant from the Pollination Group, Ross Kelly from the Department of Training and Workforce Development, Mitchell O'Dwyer from Thales, Diedre Willmott and Astrid Seventry from Fortescue, and Mark Bridges from Multiplex.

While consensus was not the aim, the perspectives shared were broadly aligned. Participants agreed that Western Australia and the nation have the ability to seize opportunities through economic reform and, with a concerted effort to foster the industries of the future, lift living standards for all. Feedback on current government policies that reduce the barriers to economic participation—such as free TAFE, cheaper child care and the construction of cheaper homes—was highly positive.

Following the summit, Treasurer Chalmers outlined a number of areas where he believed there was a strong consensus for reform, and these aligned well with the submissions we made following the WA roundtable. The summit and the WA roundtable were too extensive to cover fully here, so I'm just going to highlight a few points. The Treasurer identified international trade and tariffs. The WA roundtable wanted the east, including Canberra, to capitalise on WA being the springboard to our major trading partners in Asia. After all, WA is in the same time zone as 60 per cent of the world's population. Participants spoke about leveraging our strategic advantage for fresh food trade, exporting our skills and training in the sectors we know best—resources and agriculture—and, in turn, actively seeking out companies that bring new technology and processing capabilities to base their operations here in WA.

The Treasurer identified the need to both attract and develop skills. The WA meeting supported labour mobility agreements to address gaps and the need to value skilled older workers, greater focus on regional skill development, more industry VET partnerships, better recognition of qualifications and an increased focus on learning languages within our region. Deputy Premier Saffioti has already spoken, following the roundtable in the WA parliament, about the importance of training and the great strides that both our Albanese Labor government and the Cook government have already taken together, particularly since our introduction of fee-free TAFE.

The Treasurer also identified the fact that we can attract better capital and investment, and our WA group noted the need to provide regional and local governments with more flexible infrastructure spending, to upgrade road and freight corridors, to adopt more whole-of-government approaches to industry precincts, and to encourage viewing net zero and CBAM as opportunities to position ourselves in the international green supply chain.

The Treasurer further identified better regulation and speedier approvals in housing and other areas of development. The WA roundtable looked at interfaces between portfolio areas, such as health, aged care and the NDIS, and saw the need to create cross-sector taskforces involving industry, universities and governments to plan workforce transitions.

I wish to place on the record my heartfelt thanks to all those who gave their time and valuable expertise at the WA economic reform roundtable ahead of the summit. We hope that our collective deliberations will contribute to more practical reform both in this and future terms of office, because the reality is that the feedback we heard, both from the participants at the national and at the state roundtable, was that this is a collective effort to lift our national productivity—small, medium and large enterprises alike. Everyone has a role to play to lift the living standards for all.

House adjourned at 20 : 00

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