Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this motion. In doing so, I'm very pleased that the member for Dawson is here today, because it gives me a chance to discuss this in front of him. The last time I was speaking about manufacturing, and the pinning of blame for the Australian car industry walking out the door and overseas, he was able to somehow misinterpret those comments, blaming the Albanese government for being responsible for the end of our car industry.

It is not without some irony that I read the first line of the member for Dawson's motion, which is:

Noting that Australian manufacturing has undergone significant transformation over the past decades …

That is an understatement of epic proportions. Let's just look at the two elements of that first line. The first is: Who was in government over the past few decades? Who's been in government for most of the last 30 years? That's the coalition government. That's an easy one to answer. When they talk about 'significant transformation', what they really mean, surely, is the decimation of our manufacturing industry. To begin with that statement is either spectacular irony or it is that they've completely missed the point. It was their policies over the last three decades or so.

I guess the member for Dawson would also probably be inclined to agree with a bit of what I have to say, because, deep within the heart of the National Party, I've always seen that there is a little bit of common sense—deep, deep within that part of the coalition. I think the member for Dawson, like many people in the bush, like many people who believe in that national spirit, has probably watched in dismay over the last 30 years as coalition partners have walked away from supporting Australian industry. That walking away has taken three elements. The first is privatisation. The second is economic rationalism. And the third is unfettered free trade.

While we all acknowledge that free trade has been particularly beneficial to the agriculture industry and given us access to markets overseas that have really supercharged the agricultural industry, that completely ignores the effect that it's had on the manufacturing industry. Instead of actually providing some sort of support to industries which are effectively, when you have lower tariffs, competing against state owned industries overseas, then, really, that is not fair trade. While lower tariffs have been a spectacular thing for our local economy, they have been one of the reasons we've been able to keep inflation down for so long. It has been a great thing to be able to bring in cheaper imports. But it cannot come at the cost of manufacturing—when you let those imports come in, but you let your own domestic companies compete against effectively foreign owned state companies.

We have seen, with the privatisation of essential services like communications—for instance, Telstra being privatised—it has hit the bush particularly hard. We've also seen a lack of public housing. It must be remembered that part of our postwar economic miracle was very much an investment in public housing and an investment in public energy, something which was done by both coalition and Labor governments, the idea being that if you can keep the cost of living down by providing affordable housing, you're able to keep wages down. The best example of that was Elizabeth in South Australia, where you had a car industry effectively built around public housing, which was provided to keep that cost of living down, which kept the pressure off wages, which ultimately provided a high standard of living and was able to support Australian industry.

Unfortunately, instead of pursuing that approach, we saw the coalition, as they took part in this significant transformation over the past few decades, walking away from that basic support—walking away from providing essential government support directly to keep those industries going but also from providing those sort of ancillary services, like cheaper energy and cheaper housing. So it is with some recognition of that irony that I rise to oppose this motion today.

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