MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr ROB MITCHELL (McEwen) (15:56): You would have thought it was Christmas. It's been a week of division, derision and infighting over there, so what do they do on the last day? They bring in an MPI that embarrasses them even worse.
It's like looking at the Mos Eisley Cantina across there when we talk about manufacturing and what's happened. This government came into office backing manufacturing, and I'm surprised; the member for Capricornia might want to remember the report from the committee that she was deputy chair of. It talked about sustainable, sovereign and smart manufacturing.
It was not like they do over there. You see old mate from Canning over there, sitting up the back next to a 1969 XW Falcon and in G paint code! He talks about how he wants to bring back 1969 cars.
Even Ford moved on from that. Ford, of course, went through and did XA, C, D, F—right through to the FGX, which was the last car produced in Australia. Why?
It was because those opposite told Ford they would not support manufacturing in Australia and were scrapping support for the car industry. It's been an amazing journey when you sit there and think about Sophie Mirabella—that wonderful human being, I say sarcastically—out there telling all those manufacturing workers and ancillary businesses they were not welcome in this country.
They were not. I'm going to quote from something that happened many years ago, from a good friend of mine, the now minister for housing in South Australia who was the member for Wakefield, Nick Champion. He stood up in this place very bravely and said: In 1947 Joseph Benedict Chifley went to watch the first Holden leave the line at Fishermans Bend.
The question was: was Joseph Benedict Hockey going to watch the last one? That was on the day that the former coalition government went and told the industry to leave. In fact, if I read from a Phil Coorey article—something I don't normally do—it says, 'Hockey dares GM to leave,' and it says the federal government had accused Holden of being the problem.
The problem was that, during that time, it was the federal government that knocked off the industry. It wasn't the Labor Party; it was the federal government of the Liberals that went out. The quotes at the time were all about it being a few thousand jobs at Ford or a few thousand jobs over here, forgetting the ancillary industries.
I watched manufacturers in my electorate who had been working for decades building automotive parts have to go offshore because the ability to continue making those parts and keeping it profitable with the economies of scale was gone. These are the things that happened under their watch. There has never been a manufacturing industry that they haven't wanted to get rid of.
The only industry they care about is the one that fills the bank books, and that's the mining industry. They've never cared about any sort of manufacturing, whether it be the rag trade or any form of construction, automotive, shoes, tires—the whole lot. Whenever there's a manufacturing industry going offshore, you can guarantee the coalition government has its finger on the button that says 'eject'.
That's thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs that people lose. We heard an extraordinary contribution earlier about bringing in workers to build this country. We have a skilled migration list for electricians, construction workers and engineers.
All these things have a shortage. You closed the technical colleges that actually made these people get jobs! Mr Kennedy: They're excluded on your priority list!
Mr ROB MITCHELL: But what happened under you? I'll give you a simple little thing. One of the key skills they had on their skills list was a yoga teacher.
That's the way you build an economy. That's the way you build manufacturing into the future. The hypocrisy of those opposite is just second to none.
As we head back on the weekend, we think about all those jobs. I know that when we fly over the old Ford factories, as we head into Melbourne, we'll see a very big empty block of land. We'll see an empty block of land that families had built their lives on, that careers had been built on and where generations of workers had worked hard to deliver Australian made products that they just pushed out the door without a second glance.
It is our government that has continued to fight for manufacturing and push for the products of the future. We see what's happening in the medtech space. We see what's happening in quantum.
Wherever you look, the future of manufacturing can be bright in Australia, if you have a government that actually backs it. This is a government that backs it, not only with support but with the money to do it. We see the stuff that's being built in medtech right across this country that will go around the world.
It will create better lives for people, and we're doing it here. The biggest issue people had for many years in that situation was not getting support from those opposite. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
You can always guarantee that a Liberal-National coalition will never back manufacturing. (Time expired)