Second Reading – Future Made in Australia Bill 2024

Mr PITT (Hinkler) (18:39): I rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, which I have a lot of problems with, and the first is with the title. The title of this bill should be ‘no future for made in Australia manufacturing under this Labor government’—none; absolutely none. And I’ll go on to explain why that’s the case and line up the facts that demonstrate it.

We should talk a little bit about what’s on the line here. In this country, there are 909,100 Australians who are employed in manufacturing. Almost a million people rely on this sector—a million! And I can guarantee you that even this Labor government, as hard as it might try, can’t subsidise every single one of those jobs. They cannot. For them to maintain their employment to continue to be able to pay their mortgages, they need businesses that are competitive to be able to employ them, and that is the fundamental problem right now.

I read through any number of the documents, including some of the consultation papers and everything else, and I thought: What is critical manufacturing right now? What is one of our biggest issues right now, and how would this bill apply to it? One of the biggest challenges right now is actually a shortfall in intravenous saline. It is a huge problem. There is not enough. It affects every single hospital, every GP practice and anyone that’s doing theatre. I’m getting any number of complaints. Yet the application of this bill could not produce more saline manufacturing in this country—unless, of course, it’s some wind turbine driven net zero fantasy that delivers more intravenous saline. It can’t. This is a critical problem right now that this bill does absolutely nothing about—nothing. So all of those businesses that are out there who are trying to simply survive and keep those 909,000 Australians in a job can’t do that, because this Labor government is killing their productivity, competitiveness and profitability, and no business that is not profitable can survive unless of course it has the largesse of this Labor government.

Here are the facts. There are 19,000 businesses that have become insolvent since this government came to power. It is the highest number since records commenced. Since this government came to power, 19,000 businesses have gone broke. That is because of the fundamentals of the economy, which are managed by this federal Labor government. The settings are completely wrong. They are wrong, and that is why the coalition will oppose this bill. We will oppose this bill because it will not deliver what this country needs. It is quite simple.

What else has happened that caused a lot of damage for those poor Australians who are out there trying to survive what is a cost-of-living crisis, whether they work in manufacturing or another industry? Their personal income taxes are up 20 per cent. So they have less of their own money to buy things that cost more, which are produced predominantly overseas, and nothing in this bill helps them. If you’ve got a mortgage, you’re paying $35,000 more if it’s a $750,000 average mortgage. But how does this bill help them? How does it help Australians? How does it provide more jobs? How does it make all businesses competitive? It simply doesn’t.

The bill proposes changes to the way that ARENA operates. For those of us who have been in this place for quite some time, we know that the way Labor sets up these types of slush funds is to ensure that when there’s a change of government—and there will be a change of government; there always is—it’s almost impossible to get the money, the taxpayers’ funds, returned. It’s almost impossible to close them down regardless of what they are doing. We know the challenge we had with ARENA when the Abbott government first came in in 2013. It’s still there. So ARENA is now going to do all sorts of things. It will move further into deployment and further into manufacturing. Why? Why do you need all of the other organisations, including things like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? Why do they exist if you’re now going to have ARENA doing this type of work? It is quite an incredible approach.

We keep hearing about the National Interest Framework. It’s quite a convenient term. We have a treasurer who practically has never worked in industry. He has never run a business; that’s absolutely definite. He has spent a lot of time here. He is currently running lots of businesses into the ground but is somehow going to use the National Interest Framework to make decisions. We’ve already seen some of the decisions which are proposed to be under this bill. The Solar Sunshot was one, manufacturing solar panels here in Australia. I saw the Prime Minister and Minister Bowen and everyone else making those announcements and how wonderful it was. But, in the last week or so, what have we seen? We’ve seen announcements from that company that they’re actually standing down workers and sacking people. So, Solar Sunshot, under the National Interest Framework—which is apparently going to be achieved somehow—has already misfired. We’ve got fewer people working in that industry than before. That is where this federal Labor government is trying to drive this country.

Look at the things that are not included. Carbon capture and storage is not included. We hear the government rail against carbon capture and storage, but I’d suggest to every single one of them that they should go and read the CSIRO’s report. They love the CSIRO and love reports from the CSIRO. The report says that the only way to achieve the carbon offsets that the federal Labor government wants to achieve is with CCS, because no other existing protocol can do it. It simply—physics, economics—can’t deliver it.

We see nothing for uranium. We see nothing for nuclear, because they are opposed to it—unless, of course, it’s a nuclear reactor being built in Britain, paid for by the taxpayer with some $4½ billion, to go into a submarine. It’s apparently got nothing to do with nuclear, will go into Western Australia and be at HMAS Stirling. Other than that, they are opposed to nuclear. Obviously, it’s different, but it looks like the same sort of reactor to me.

On the community benefit principles, we heard from the independent member for Indi about her concerns about integrity. We’ve long held those concerns. The ability of the unions, particularly the CFMEU, to reach into this government and get an outcome that they want is quite incredible. We only have to look at the changes demanded in industrial relations, which have made all major employers in this country less productive already. We have seen incredible decisions about the CFMEU’s behaviour. Yet, they only represent 12½ per cent of the workforce in this country. So, an organisation of all the unions put together—this is from the 2022 ABS report—that represents just 12½ per cent of the workforce in this country now has the overwhelming control of a slush fund like this. The reach of the unions into this government is absolutely extraordinary. This is not the way to build a strong economy that will drive future opportunities for every single Australia.

Who else disagrees? There are any number of individuals out there who don’t agree with the proposal, including some of the Labor government’s own appointments. The Productivity Commission says that a $1 billion commitment to make more solar panels in Australia under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia program should be retrospectively subjected to a tougher national interest framework. So, it’s opposed by the government’s own appointment who, as an aside, actually supports death taxes, which I’m confident the Australian people will not support.

We can’t get production on critical saline, but, apparently, we can do green hydrogen. I went back and looked at the Prime Minister’s press release about this bill. When it comes to hydrogen, the proposal is to provide a subsidy of $2 a kilo. Why is $2 a kilo important? If you look back to the former report from the then Chief Scientist, the numbers were very straightforward. It’s Economics 101: practicality, profitability, deliverability, competitiveness and international competitiveness. Right now, you can’t produce green hydrogen for less than about $8 a kilo. To be competitive, it has to be $2 a kilo. The only way to come close is to get the feedstock from petrochemicals, from gas and coal—particularly brown coal, because it’s cheap and there’s a lot of it. In fact, there was a prototype in Victoria in partnership with Japan which, I’m told, has now shut down, unfortunately. This Labor government says that these proposals are all okay because physics doesn’t matter, economics doesn’t matter, and energy transfer doesn’t matter. ‘We’ll give you a $2-a-kilo subsidy and, somehow, you’ll go from $8 to $2 and be competitive.’ It is nonsense. In fact, even Twiggy Forrest, with Fortescue, has now scaled back.

I’ve been to any number of the presentations around green hydrogen, and it’s always the same. The technical experts—these are real ones: chemical engineers, physicists, the people who know what they’re doing—put a big thing up on the PowerPoint screen.

It says we need a technological breakthrough in every stage of the production cycle to be anywhere near competitive. I tell you that is not going to happen. It is not, and yet we have billions being thrown at what is a pipe dream. We heard from the Prime Minister today about Gladstone. We’ve heard from other speakers about the Gladstone proposal. That would be 2½ thousand square kilometres of solar panels. That is ludicrous. It will not happen. Can you imagine, in order to deliver what’s proposed for Gladstone, that this federal Labor government will get an approval from the Minister for the Environment to level and clear 2½ thousand square kilometres of this country in order to put solar panels on it? It just won’t happen. It is nonsense. So let’s get back to things that matter, things that are practical, things that work.

The alternative is very straightforward: get back to the fundamentals. The fundamentals ensure that every single manufacturing business is competitive—not just the ones that are handpicked by the unions and the federal Labor government but all of them. That means you need affordable, reliable energy, whether that is electricity or gas. You need an available workforce that has the skills needed to deliver what your business needs. You need government to get out of your way. You need to cut red and green tape. And look at what this federal Labor government has done to businesses across this country already. We have already seen proposals around the safeguards mechanism, the green police, ‘nature positive’, industrial relations laws and pattern bargaining. None of them address productivity. All drive down the competitiveness of Australia’s manufacturing sectors.

Fundamentally, we have to get energy prices down, in particular gas and in Victoria, because in some kind of miracle the Victorian state Labor government prohibited gas production, and now they have run out. The Bass Strait is in decline. That has been a known quantity for a long time. There are opportunities to get more out of the Bass Strait, but we’re not seeing those approvals. We’re not seeing onshore approvals. You cannot run gas from Gladstone all the way to Victoria and have it be competitive with the Bass Strait. You just cannot. That is physics and economics. And yet we see nothing here to support the gas sector and the manufacturing jobs in Victoria that need that affordable and reliable gas.

We see a new Minister for Skills and Training, who did an extraordinary job as the previous minister for immigration. We all know what’s happened there. I’m not sure what the apprentices of Australia have done to the federal Labor government—I’m really not—but they’ve really upset them!

You need to ensure that every business can compete. As I said earlier, 19,000 of them have gone insolvent since this Labor government came into power. The numbers are clear. Business cannot survive under the policy settings of this government, and this bill does not help them. It will help handpicked, union selected, localised individual groups, and so far they’ve been complete misfires. Sunshot already looks like a failure; they’re already firing people. PsiQuantum is a US company, and we’ve seen all sorts of reports about the selection process already. What is wrong with the Australian companies? They have been working for decades in Sydney at NICTA and other organisations to deliver quantum computing, and yet the priorities of this Labor government are simply wrong.

If you cannot drive down the fundamentals, all businesses go broke. If you cannot get your energy costs under control, all businesses go broke. If you cannot ensure that your labour force is paid well and can afford to live, they’re not there either.

This bill is wrong. We will not be supporting it. The coalition will not support this madness. This is another bucket of union-run money which should not be delivered by the taxpayer. Once again it is up to the coalition to stand up to this madness being delivered by this Labor government. Unfortunately, it continues. I’m sure there will be a deal with the Greens, and they’ll all sing kumbaya and do it anyway.