Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I usually stay out of state matters and instead focus on delivering benefits from federal policies to Newcastle. But after a year and a half in power the local NSW Liberal MPs need to be held to account. In Saturday's Newcastle Herald article 'Chocks away for first blocks of destroyer', New South Wales Liberal member for Newcastle, Tim Owen, had the audacity to comment on the progress of the Forgacs air warfare destroyer contract. This contract, worth almost $300 million locally, was awarded to a consortium that included Forgacs by the federal Labor government when Greg Combet, now Minister for Industry and Innovation, was the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement. This followed years of lobbying the Defence Materiel Organisation with my local manufacturers to convince them of the capacity of regional Australia to undertake defence contracts.

Currently Newcastle manufacturers are delivering almost half a billion dollars of federal government defence contracts, creating long-term employment and training opportunities for hundreds of Novocastrians. Our federal Labor government also funded the ME program in Newcastle—a program that encourages secondary students to consider careers in engineering and manufacturing and forges partnership between industry, schools and training organisations. We have also granted the University of Newcastle's well-known Science and Engineering Challenge program over $2.4 million since 2007.

It is the decisions and the funding of the federal Labor government, not Tim Owen or the New South Wales Liberal government, that are keeping Hunter manufacturing strong. Some of the Forgacs work is being carried out at the former ADI site at Carrington. The use of that excellent facility has been assisted by the New South Wales Liberal government, but that commitment was gained by the previous New South Wales Labor member for Newcastle. The other political reality is that the ADI site is only there because it was built when a previous federal Labor government awarded the Huon Class minehunter contract to ADI Newcastle. That contract was followed by the awarding to ADI of the watercraft contract, also carried out at their Newcastle site under a previous federal Labor government. The former ADI site has returned to full use because federal Labor returned to government and, once more, awarded significant Defence contracts that benefit Newcastle manufacturers and shipbuilders.

In contrast, Tim Owens's New South Wales Liberal government last week made cuts to the group training scheme and subsidies for apprentices, making it harder for local manufacturers to train the workers they need; and his Liberal state government axed the previous New South Wales Labor government's $20,000 annual funding to the Founders Forum—a home-grown venture capital organisation set up to assist our local innovators to finance the production and implementation of their clever ideas. They did retain a Defence manufacturing coordination position auspiced by HunterNet—but again you can thank the previous New South Wales Labor government for that initiative. So before Tim Owen makes further comment on manufacturing in Newcastle he might actually list just what he has delivered.

Tim Owen also commented, in an article entitled 'Hunter electric storm' in Saturday's Herald, on the recent Hunter Valley Electric Vehicle Festival, which was staged by Newcastle University's Tom Farrell Institute with the assistance of a grant of $20,000 from the federal Labor government. Amazingly Tim Owen pointed to the need to diversify our economy—exactly why the federal Labor government has invested $200 million into clean energy research and innovation in Newcastle and $65 million into two world-class research institutes—the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources and the Hunter Medical Research Institute. With health and education being our biggest employers, Tim Owen and his local state Liberal colleagues should be ashamed that these are the areas being savagely cut right now by the O'Farrell government, delivering a significant loss of jobs and services for Novocastrians.

If Tim Owen wants to know more about the nature of our local economy, he could take advantage of the information collated by the Hunter Valley Research Foundation, a leader in informing the diversification of our economy—the very same organisation that his New South Wales Liberal government cut to the tune of $150,000 per annum in their last budget.

So I say to Tim Owen: it is time that every action and inaction by his New South Wales Liberal government was measured against the cost and benefit to Newcastle. With just over two years to go before the next New South Wales election, the ledger is out of balance, with too much on the cost side and very little on the benefit side. Instead of commenting on every activity as though he were personally responsible, it is time Tim Owen started representing the people and interests of Newcastle in the state parliament.