Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government's economic recovery plan is working to support Australian businesses, particularly our manufacturers, to create jobs and grow the economy?

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

I thank the member for his question. Even during COVID, and even with the challenges that have faced the manufacturing sector in Australia, indicators like export prices and profitability demonstrate the real resilience of manufacturing in Australia during these challenging times. Through the first phase of COVID, in the March quarter to 2021, manufacturing profits actually rose—in fact, by 6.8 per cent—and in fact were 16 per cent higher over that very, very challenging year. Even through COVID, export prices for Australian manufacturers increased by about 1½ per cent over the March 2021 quarter, which is a demonstration of the remarkable resilience of the sector. That's why the Morrison government is investing so heavily in this sector with the $1.5 billion Modern Manufacturing Strategy, designed to focus on and target six national manufacturing priority areas of comparative advantage and strategic importance. That helps protect and promote jobs during the challenges of COVID, but it also leverages us out of COVID and creates stimulus and job growth during the post-COVID period that we are all looking forward to.

I recently announced, as was noted, 17 successful projects. They were valued at $257 million across three of those national priority areas: space, medical products, resources technology and critical minerals processing. Those recipients will share in grants of around $100 million under the initial round of the Modern Manufacturing Initiative. One example of those is a fantastic business in the member for O'Connor's electorate—Lynas Rare Earths. Their project is using $14.8 million in funding to develop a world-first streamlined process to refine rare-earth ore. That is so important, because they're essential components for manufacturing devices like smartphones, computers, rechargeable batteries and electric vehicles. Here is the value add for the great minerals that we produce.

Another fantastic example is the Morrison government investing $36 million in innovative medical technologies and manufacturing projects. Of that, $3 million is going to help Avicena Systems, whom I recently visited. They have an amazing product called the Sentinel COVID-19 screening system, and that system, which is absolutely world-class, cutting-edge technology, can be used to rapidly test more than 90,000 people for COVID every day, producing results inside a 24-hour period. As you can imagine, the worldwide demand for a product like that is absolutely immense. Their constraint has been that they've only been able to produce four of them so far. With this grant, they estimate that they will be able to produce 20 of these quite remarkable pieces of equipment per month. That will meet Australian demand and worldwide demand. That's $1.5 billion worth of investment.