Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are halfway through National Manufacturing Week and, sadly, the woeful and weak Gillard government still cannot even summon so much as a half-hearted interest in the sector's future. Nearly 90,000 jobs have already been lost under Labor. There have been more than 20 separate monthly contractions in sectoral activity, after 13 expansions in the last 14 months of the Howard government. A string of manufacturing businesses have been forced to close or are relocating offshore. The government has failed to seriously address the increasingly fraught problem of the ineffectiveness of Australia's anti-dumping laws. They have not adequately changed government procurement processes that are not always working in the best interests of local firms. And now there is the imposition of a carbon tax on a sector that is already punch drunk after being whacked between the eyes again and again by a government that appears to be hell bent on beating it into surrender.

The tragedy is that it does not have to come to this. If sensible policies had been put in place and if the government were not now trying to saddle the sector with a carbon tax then we could actually do something to assist innovative and hard-working Australian manufacturers. Instead, thousands of hard-working Australians are paying for the government's incompetence with lost jobs and lost opportunities. Sadly, the industry minister has been spearing the darts at Australian businesses himself. He should be ashamed to collect the salary of a cabinet minister and purport to represent the interests of Australian manufacturing. He has pretended on the one hand, through his meaningless rhetoric, that he is interested in activities like manufacturing but, behind the sector's back, he has not done a damn thing to build a policy framework and that has left the sector particularly exposed. Unfortunately, there is a stench and a deep seated hostility that has grown all around this minister and it is engulfing him quite desperately. This is a minister who is so badly out of touch that he even sends out media releases that describe axed programs as being 'integral' to his manufacturing vision. For his first few years in the job he played a silly game of picking winners or, to be more accurate in this government's case, picking losers. But he has lost the game. In fact, he has been given a shellacking at it.

To be fair, it is a challenging time for policymakers in this space. But most of the problems have been self-inflicted by this government. Where previous governments engaged in genuine reform, this abysmal administration has been found wanting and failed in any way to confront the serious and difficult issues confronting not just the Australian economy but specifically manufacturing. It has been more interested in naval gazing and its own spin than in the lives and prosperity of these manufacturing businesses and the decent, hard-working Australians who have invested so much. How much more humiliating can it get for a government when a former union boss who now fancies himself as a Prime Minister in waiting gets the frostiest of frosty receptions from a mass of workers at Port Kembla, or when an industry minister who once eulogised about the importance of working closely with manufacturers is told in no uncertain terms by manufacturing leaders that he is part of a government with an approach that is simplistic, ill-considered, destructive and politically expedient?

These are not descriptions from the coalition. These come from the business community, from real people out there employing one million Australians. But what does the government do? It just buries its head in the sand. During this National Manufacturing Week it is time to focus on this particular sector. As hostile as the current government and its supporters are to Australian manufacturing and workers, I applaud the innovation, the commitment and the risks that manufacturing businesses take and commend their innovation and hard work. The coalition recognise this—we value you. We give you a political voice and an alternative of real policy and reform that will see Australia still making things by 2050. (Time expired)