MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Ms CAMPBELL (Moreton) (16:17): Just a few short weeks ago, we all saw a video posted online. What that video showed was a man standing next to a car—a car that was manufactured in this country. The man talked about the fact that he believed that manufacturing was important.

I don't think that I've ever seen a video more ironic than that one, because the man standing next to that car was the member for Canning. I want to use the words of the member for Canning because I think he spoke them best: The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The hypocrisy was breathtaking because what we know is that the member for Canning was a member of the coalition—every member sitting across this chamber is a member of the coalition—who, when they were in government, voted for the car industry to go offshore.

They sent it offshore. When the car industry was on its knees, they kicked it in the guts and sent those jobs away. Five hundred million dollars was ripped out of the industry, tens of thousands of jobs were no longer there, and critical skills that we need to make the manufacturing industry run were lost. 'Why stop there?' the coalition said. 'There are more manufacturing industries that we can put on the chopping block.' The shipbuilding industry—what did we see in the shipbuilding industry?

We saw two big shipyards go overseas—more jobs lost. The train manufacturing industry in my home state of Queensland—what did we see from an LNP government? We saw trains sent overseas and a generational facility in Maryborough face the threat of closure until a Labor government brought those trains back home and brought that manufacturing back home, because we know that manufacturing is absolutely critical.

It contributes over $100 billion to our GDP, 22 per cent of our exports are from manufacturing, and a million jobs come from manufacturing. That's why Labor is investing in manufacturing. We are rebuilding the industry.

We're investing in it. We're supporting the workers who work in the industry. And how are we doing that?

With $15 billion invested into local manufacturing firms. As we've heard again and again, there are 7,500 more businesses that do the business of manufacturing since 2020. Not only that—we've seen $400 million in industry growth.

In my local electorate, in Archerfield, I went to visit a company called Endua. What does Endua get? Endua got an industry growth grant of $4.8 million so that they could work on electrolyser technology.

This is advanced manufacturing. This is manufacturing that creates jobs. And not only that—I had the great privilege just the other day to open the new SMART CRC, which is working in medical manufacturing—curing diseases but also creating more manufacturing jobs that can replace the many, many thousands of jobs that the coalition sent offshore.

There is $500 million in support for battery manufacture. There is free TAFE, and we all know what they think about free TAFE: they don't support it. But free TAFE is something that supports the skills that we need in manufacturing.

And there is over $22 billion for Future Made in Australia. The coalition woke up today and said, 'Let's pretend that we support manufacturing,' but we remember that they don't, and certainly the people who lost their jobs, the households who lost a wage and the aftermarket, which had money that they relied on every single day ripped out of the economy, remember it too.

When you care about something, you don't send it away. When you care about something, you don't defund it. When you care about something, you don't reject opportunities for renewables and battery manufacturing that will make the industry stronger.

When you care about something, you don't ship off the workers who drive that industry. What we know about the coalition is that they don't care about manufacturing now, they didn't care about manufacturing then, and they will never care about manufacturing. Today is 9 October, and it's an important day because today is the anniversary of the very famous misogyny speech given by a great prime minister, Julia Gillard.

So, in a hat-tip to her, I finish this speech by saying this: I will not be lectured to about manufacturing by this coalition. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The time for this discussion has now concluded.