Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

This statement to the Senate comes with a really bad odour to it. It is a statement of fear with panic written all over it. The statement is more about the minister trying to convince himself that everything is okay and trying to convince some in his party that everything is okay. It is a statement that is absolutely devoid of anything new. This government has a major problem. It has a very significant problem. It is that nobody trusts them anymore. They have no credibility. They have lost the confidence of the Australian community, the Australian investment community, the manufacturing sector and industry generally. They are a government that has become, quite frankly, a sovereign risk.

When major manufacturers in this country tell me that they have opened their books and their plans for the future for the next 10 years to this government and they have invested in accordance with the promises made to them by this government, only to have the rug pulled out from underneath them, they then ask me, 'Why should we continue to invest in this country? Why should we continue to believe it when the government tells us what its intentions for this nation and for the manufacturing sector might be?' They tell me that their corporate headquarters ask, 'What is going on in Australia that we can give you the go-ahead to invest, based on a promise given to us in The Lodge in Canberra, and then the promise doesn't last three or four years?' Why should they continue to invest here on the basis of that?

This is the climate that this government has created through its complete and utter mismanagement of the Australian economy: no trust and no credibility and they have completely lost the confidence of Australian industry and the investment community. I will put a few things on the record: more than 105,000 manufacturing jobs lost over the last three years, 620 jobs a week on average; a reduction in the total number of manufacturing workers in Australia to under one million, the worst figure since ABS figures were kept; at least 24 separate monthly contractions in manufacturing activity since Labor came into office.

Over the weekend we heard on Insiders on Sunday morning that this was going to be a bad week for manufacturing. That was the prediction of Phil Coorey on Sunday. On Monday morning we woke up to hear of a thousand jobs going at BlueScope Steel and on Monday morning the Treasurer said that there would be some more action in the week and 'it's our intention to match our capabilities with opportunities'. The Prime Minister even gave an indication of something big when she said 'we'll have something more to say about the advocacy for Australian industry during the course of this week'. And what do we get? We get Peter Beattie. That is all the Australian government has to offer Australian industry: Peter Beattie standing alongside Minister Carr as industries they slide backwards.

Minister Carr said in his presentation a few moments ago that they are modernising the telecommunications system. Well, that is not going to occur until 2020. And they are rebuilding rail and port infrastructure. But they do not have a finite plan. So I take the time to look on the Infrastructure Australia website for plans but it refers me across to the Treasury website and it says that those plans are not finalised yet! They are acting on antidumping but they are making some small changes at the margins at this stage and we are yet to see the rest of the government's agenda on that. And they say they making use of the taxation system— and we saw the passing of legislation yesterday—but industry are not as confident as the government as to the impact of the measures, and we will have to wait and see what happens with those. Then, of course, they say they are leading the nation's transition to a clean-energy future. But what is that code for? That is code for a carbon tax. We know that there are enormous stresses on the economy at the moment; we know that and we all understand that. The dollar is a significant issue and there are significant structural changes occurring in industry. But the minister's statement brings absolutely nothing new to give any confidence to anyone in industry. It is simply a regurgitation of what has gone before. So what they are doing, when things are really tough, is to impose yet more cost, a greater impost on industry in this country, and they expect industry to be prepared to accept that.

I do not understand the thinking of the government. Having gone through all of the issues, experienced all of those terrible statistics—105,000 manufacturing jobs lost over the last three years at the rate of 620 a week—the government's response is to add more to the cost of business in Australia when their major competitors are not suffering that. Is it any wonder that businesses have no confidence in Australia as an investment destination? Then we hear from industry that the assistance that is being offered by the government in compensation for this additional tax, the carbon tax, is like 'a bandaid on a bullet wound'. Industry has no confidence in what this government has to offer and it is no wonder that the minister is here trying to convince himself and some of his back bench that there might be some future for the industry.

I took the time to look around my home state of Tasmania and the impact since this minister came to office on manufacturing. Having done that, I thought, 'Let's take it a little further.' The major players who have had a significant impact are BlueScope Steel—and we have already had a discussion about the desperate situation there where 1,000 jobs are to go; Tascott Templeton, the last carpet manufacture of its type in Australia, which closed last year; McCain, which has moved all of its vegetable processing out of Australia and to New Zealand; and ACL Bearings in Launceston which made the announcement yesterday of another 30 jobs to go. We have heard about One Steel and PaperlinX, or Australian Paper, which has closed both its Wesley Vale and Burnie plants. We have got Bosch making decisions, as well as Golden Circle, SPC Ardmona and Ford at Broadmeadow and Geelong. Schweppes is looking very closely at its operations. Kingwall Manufacturing expect to offer redundancies in the next couple of weeks—so that is something else coming down the line. There is Boral Plywood in Ipswich. Crest Curtains and Blinds have knocked 10 per cent off their staff and are outsourcing to Asia. Heinz Australia have plants in Girgarre, Wagga Wagga and Brisbane. Austral Shipping has left Tasmania and sacked more than 100 workers. BHP Billiton has closed the Ravensthorpe nickel mine. Other major players are Pacific Brands, Bridgestone's Adelaide plant, Visicorp at Taree and Mitsubishi in Adelaide. National Foods have undergone a major restructuring of their operations. The list goes on and on. Yet we get from this government a ministerial statement that effectively restates the same story. It talks about manufacturing and future operations for the 21st century. The Australian people are tired of the rhetoric, the same old stories. It is little wonder that they have lost confidence, they have lost trust and that industry in this country is seriously reconsidering whether this nation has an investment future.

The government needs to do better than just rhetoric. It really does seriously need to lift its game if it is going to win that confidence back. It needs to offer more than a ministerial statement and Peter Beattie as a solution to the current manufacturing crisis in this country. It really does need to do better. My fear is that, with that complete and utter lack of confidence, it is not going to be able to do it.

Question agreed to.