Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week was Australian Made Week, and local manufacturing is an incredibly important part of my local community. Our businesses are innovating and making high quality Australian product and creating fantastic employment pathways for young people, and I'm incredibly proud to be a part of a government that is once again focused on backing local manufacturing.

Just last week I visited DentaLife, which is a leading provider of dental equipment and healthcare sanitisation equipment in our country. They began in a garage, back in 1999, and they have become a real success story—leading the way in the dentistry industry, providing key supplies to dentists around the country. They also have a presence in Asia as well.

They have also been working on medical equipment wipes—the only organisation in Australia that is able to make accredited and standard-fulfilling wipes for medical equipment. Yet they find themselves in a frustrating position. They are at the leading edge of creating technology that is suitable in the healthcare profession, yet they find themselves unable to sell their product. They have some of the best products in the world, but, due to inertia, sometimes, in supply chains, we're seeing circumstances in the healthcare and other professions where they're just not turning their minds to the importance of backing Australian manufacturing—not when it's a crisis, not when the other supply chains shut down, but as a matter of course, to ensure our resilience.

They are a reminder to me that good Australian-made products must be supported, whenever possible. In this case, it even makes sense, because DentaLife has been able to make a product that is better in quality and competitive on price.

On any reading of any environmental or social responsibility, or any corporate social responsibility policy, it would be completely remiss to not have a focus on protecting Australian manufacturing, particularly in key areas—particularly in medical hygiene. It is a key tier-1 area in my mind.

Now, obviously, when it comes to resilience, we've got those things that we can simply not live without during a period of crisis. Then we've got other ones where we can, with secure and multiple supply chains, maintain adequate supply of what we need and those nice-to-haves. But medical hygiene is a key one—and we saw it during COVID. We need to be able to produce our own hygiene products in the medical profession.

We've got a product, here in Australia, proudly made in my electorate, and we have the tragedy that hospitals continue to import these wipes. To me, that is a great lost opportunity to secure our resilience and ensure that we have what we need when times get tough. And let's face it: the world, as it is now, is telling us that we are going to have tough times; we are going to have supply-chain disruptions. So maintaining that resilience in critical industries is essential, and this is just one small example. It might sound a little petty of me to be going on about medical equipment wipes, but it is an example of how we have to be thoughtful about every single decision we make and of where the procurement officer in a large business actually has an incredibly important job—not just in the moment, and not just for economic efficiency, but as part of a strategic pivot to ensuring that we maintain a secure and resilient supply chain for these essential products. I would encourage all hospitals and every veterinary clinic to consider investing in DentaLife wipes because it is a small decision you can make that can make an enormous difference to maintaining our sovereign capability in this very, very important area.

We've seen, particularly in recent months, the importance of being very clear minded as to what is absolutely essential when times are tough. I look in the regions and I see the concern about urea. I see that as another example of where we've really got to learn the lessons of this moment. We know that we can make urea. It's a fairly simple chemical. We can produce it through gas. We can produce green urea as well, through making ammonia. There are lots of options.

It is absolutely important that we have the systems in place to ensure that these dependencies are taken care of in moments of difficulty. It is essential to our security as a country that we be very clear eyed as to what we need when times get tough, when things get unpredictable. That means thinking about what our rural sector needs. It means thinking about what our healthcare professionals need and what our economy needs to continue when times get tough, as they inevitably will once again.

I draw this as one example of very important work not only that we, as the government, have to do but that the private sector have to do in thinking about every decision we make in terms of procurement. How are we supporting local manufacturing as an essential part of our procurement responsibilities and of our resilience? The old neo-con idea of just going for the cheapest price all the time has proven to be incredibly short-sighted. There are some things we need to be able to make and produce whenever necessary. The only way we can protect that supply is to ensure that those manufacturing businesses are alive and well when times are good, that we make those decisions all the time and that we don't just buy from overseas and then suddenly, when things go wrong, come crawling to our local manufacturers and say, 'Please, please, please can you make it?' They need to invest in their technology. They need to invest in R&D.

In the case of DentaLife, they have full-time R&D staff looking at ways to innovate in everything they do. They were looking at new ways to improve dental equipment going forward when I was visiting them only a few days ago. They are so detail oriented—and here is an example—that, during COVID, when there were those wipes at Woolies with which we were wiping the trolleys, they developed a specially designed wipe so they could fit as many as possible into rollers so they could distribute wipes that were the perfect size to clean trolleys. These are thoughtful, intelligent people—problem solvers.

We have them all around Australia. Many businesses in my electorate have that engineering mindset of problem solving all the time. But, in order for them to be successful, they need to be supported when times are good and when times are bad. That is part of a strategy to ensure resilience when things aren't going as they normally would.

In my own personal view, even when the prices are a little bit different, it's still worth investing in Australian made. But in this case the economics stack up. It's actually cheaper. You use fewer wipes. They don't cost as much. They're of really high quality. To my mind, it only seems to be inertia that's driving us to continue with the status quo. But we do need to be self-critical. We need to be conscious about every single decision we make. Australian made isn't just a nice to have. It's not just a platitude. It's not just something we put on a poster. It's something in which we all have a role to play. Every choice we make, we've got to be thinking, 'What does this do to set us up as a country?' Maybe one decision alone might not do much, but, cumulatively, these decisions are essential. They help us maintain our strength and sovereignty when we really need it.

It has been a bit of a bugbear of mine, and I have written to the relevant people about this. But I think it's really important that we do get animated about the importance of supporting our essential industries, our rural and regional industries, our healthcare industries and our manufacturing across sectors. There is no element of Australian manufacturing that I'm not going to back in my area. We do amazing work. But, obviously, there are some particularly critical goods that we need to make sure we have a constant and ready supply of.

We know that resilience has value, we know that sovereign capability has value and we know that trusted local supply has value. We need to match our words with actions. That is why I'm so proud of the Albanese Labor government's Buy Australian Plan. We're leading from the front. Government is strategically making the decision to support not only local manufacturing but small and medium-sized businesses in our country to help them invest, scale up and continue to do what they do so incredibly well.

It really is about backing themselves not only in selling their goods and making a profit but in reinvesting in more research, more development and more problem solving. We've seen amazing things happen. I can think of a number of examples in my own electorate. We've got precision electronic technologies that continue to make all sorts of fantastic electronic goods. It's a really niche, high-level market. We've got pop-up recycling that has systems where you can recycle milk bottles and regenerate them through some fantastic machine work. We've got another business in our electorate that is getting an internal combustion engine and getting them running on hydrogen. We're really looking at scenarios where fuel supply chains might be unpredictable and how we can provide sustainable and emissions-free power when times get difficult not only in Australia but also in our Pacific family. There is a lot of good work being done in my wonderful area of Deakin, and I know fantastic work is being done by businesses around the country. I would urge not only government but also business, society, all of us to get on board and make a strategic decision to back Australian manufacturing whenever we get the chance.

In addition to meeting many fantastic manufacturers in our area, there have been a lot of great events in my electorate of Deakin, and I want to quickly mention one. There's a Cancer Council fundraiser in my area that has been going on for 29 years and has raised thousands and thousands of dollars. I pay tribute to Jenny Hall, who has been fundraising for the Cancer Council for 21 years. She has been an absolute force in attending those lunches, which are getting more and more people every year. It makes you really proud to be part of a community that really backs one another in. I'm always pleased to make whatever small contribution I can to those events, and I know that this really is a collective community effort, but we need those driving forces like Jenny in our communities. We all have them—people who lead from the front, who bring people together and who have that can-do mindset. Congratulations, Jenny.