Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Can the Acting Prime Minister confirm advice from the industry department to Senate estimates that it may be up to four years before mRNA manufacturing begins in Australia?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll ask the industry minister to answer that question.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for the question. With the approach to market that was put out by the government very recently with an eight-week turnaround for individual consortia to return, obviously timing was an important part of that. The McKinsey report to government which preceded that gave us very good information about a reasonable time frame for any of those consortia to put to the government as to what might be a reasonable time frame for them to propose that time in which manufacture could actually occur. In some reports, media have said, based on information that they've received, that a reasonable time frame would be three to six months. Based on all the information that we've received, we think that that is not a reasonable time frame, that it would be significantly longer than that. Information we've received suggests that a reasonable time frame would be more likely to be 12 to 18 months; four years would be an absolute outside time frame. The view that I've taken on all the information that's been provided is that that is also a very unlikely time frame on the outside, just as three to six months is a very unlikely time frame on the inside. A more likely time frame is 12 to 18 months. We have said to those people who might be submitting as consortia that, if you can reasonably submit that you may be able to do that inside the 12- to 18-month time frame, we would be very interested in looking at the proposition that you would put. But, again, the purpose of having an orthodox, orderly, informed process, informed by a very detailed report done by McKinsey, is that when consortia come to us with propositions about—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You would race to failure, is what you would do. You would race to failure without proper information, you would race to failure without proper knowledge and you would race to failure, as you have done in the past, without proper preparation. But that's not something that this government intends to do. We have gone into this in an informed way, informed about what we might reasonably expect as a proper time frame, what we might reasonably expect as a proper ask in terms of any assistance that might be provided by government with respect to infrastructure spending on either a greenfields or a brownfields site or with respect to procurement support and what might be a reasonable time frame. All of that information has been provided to us in a very detailed way so that we can consider all of the proposals that are put to us both in the approach to market and in the direct conversations that we are having with proponents. (Time expired)