David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to draw to the attention of the House the opening in the electorate of Wakefield of West Avenue, which joins the developing area of Edinburgh Parks, which is an industrial area, with Elizabeth West. On one hand, the opening of a road is of itself an achievement. It is something I am very pleased to report, given that it is something that I have been working with local industry to bring to the attention of government and to achieve funding for. So that was a good thing. But it is more important to discuss why that road was required and some of the underlying initiatives of the Howard government which helped bring it about.

An expanding industrial area means that people have the confidence to invest in companies, infrastructure, training and people in a location because they believe that there is a business case for it and it is going to be profitable. There are two main sectors that are growing rapidly in Elizabeth West and Edinburgh Parks, and they are the automotive sector and the defence sector. People have seen the incentives and the investment made by the Howard government in those sectors, and that has encouraged them to make investments in them.

While many people love to run the automotive industry down and say that it is in trouble, what we are actually seeing is a significant growth in components manufacture in that area, with jobs being created both in assembly and in production to support people like General Motors Holden at Elizabeth. There is also the exporting of components overseas. That has occurred largely because of the 10-year plan that has been worked through between this government, state governments and the automotive sector which looks at what they need in terms of certainty, both from a legislative point of view—things like tariffs—and from an investment point of view.

This government has put $7.2 billion into the Automotive Competitiveness Investment Scheme to benefit the auto industry. This means, for a lot of the things that people would like to see—lower emissions, hybrid cars or diesel cars, or alternative fuels, such as biofuels or even hydrogen—that the government has now said to the auto industry, ‘If you can show us that you’ve got a business case and you want to go down this path, we will be there to match money.’ And that is not at some point in the future; that money is available right now. I have been working with GMH to look at ways that we can encourage them to show us a business case for things like hydrogen and for alternative power. The government has put those incentives there, and that has encouraged business to come. That is just one area.

Some of the other areas that the government has been providing incentives in are things like renewable energy and low emissions for vehicles. The government has been putting in a significant amount of money. In light of this week’s budget, which shows that the government, through its strong economic management, has surpluses to be able to invest in this, it is important to recognise that things like the Renewable Energy Development Initiative have seen a large amount of money committed by the government to make sure that we get proof of concept and early commercialisation in a number of projects. This will help them get off and running. For example, some $5 million has gone into a project in the northern part of South Australia which is looking at geothermal energy. Under the REDI scheme, with respect to a low emissions future, some $75 million has gone towards a large-scale solar concentrator in regional Victoria.

In South Australia, near Whyalla, the Solar Oasis project is looking at using solar power to generate power for a desalination plant to produce water. Originally it was intended to be a joint project between state, federal and industry. Some good research by the ANU has looked at creating a new chemical process using ammonia to store solar energy to produce power around the clock, which overcomes one of the biggest drawbacks to solar energy. This government is committed to it and has recently announced another $7.4 million for that project. It is still waiting for the state government to come on board with that. What is important is that good economic management by this government has enabled underlying infrastructure for things like West Avenue as well as large-scale incentive plans to attract defence and automotive industries to Australia. It has also enabled us to put money into industry to develop new and innovative ways of developing energy sources. I particularly welcome the significant investments in things like geothermal and solar, including the Solar Oasis project in South Australia.