Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are many manufacturing business success stories in regional Australia. Blessed with stable, reliable and committed workforces, land for expansion and a resilient can-do community attitude, many of our small-to-medium-sized manufacturers thrive in our regional towns and cities, especially when government policy settings are supportive, rather than restrictive. One such is the Jamestrong precision packaging facility in Taree, in the heart of the Lyne electorate, which I've visited on two occasions. For over 30 years, Jamestrong has been producing and supplying food and aerosol cans in Australia. The plant at Taree employs 81 people, Taree's second-largest private sector employer, and produces over 100 million cans per year. It has recently invested more than $8 million in an advanced production line to restore in-house capacity to manufacture aluminium slugs and then convert them into canned products. This allows the company to secure a domestic supply chain, reduces reliance on imports and allows recycled aluminium to be incorporated into the process. This initiative has used the expertise of the University of New South Wales's Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology, a collaboration utilising world-class R&D to improve sustainability of operations, repeatedly recycle metal and provide additional ongoing employment. It's a win-win-win situation.

However, this all happens when policy settings are consistent, supportive and realistic, not inconsistent, restrictive and idealistic, which is the case with the Albanese government's headlong rush into intermittent renewables as baseload power and its ideological use of net zero for its socialist agenda. Regional manufacturers, like their city cousins and all Australian households, are under pressure. In just five years, Jamestrong's energy bills have increased by 65 per cent, insurance by 76 per cent, and rates and taxes by 75 per cent. These ever-increasing cost imposts are unsustainable and place the business at a competitive disadvantage to its offshore competitors. They undermine Australia's sovereign manufacturing goals for 'made in Australia'.

In addition, the government's energy policies are threatening the long-term viability of Tomago, the main source of local aluminium and the mainstay of Jamestrong's casting line. In addition, the push for green aluminium—that is, material made using renewable energy—has the perverse effect of pushing aluminium supply offshore, despite local aluminium being just 120 kilometres away and without the frequent flyer air miles. We need to restore balance to the production of baseload power for industry, with nuclear power and by making better use of existing coal and gas technology.