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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Given the importance that the minister claims he places on manufacturing, is it not a fact that under his watch around 130,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since mid-2008; that the green car innovation scream—sorry, scheme, but that is about all it put up; it hardly even put up a scream—was scrapped without notice to the car industry; and that the cash for clunkers scheme that he so passionately talked about was scrapped before it even started? Does the minister accept responsibility for any of these disasters in the Australian manufactur­ing industry?