PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr ABDO (Calwell) (11:47): I want to thank the member for Forde for moving this motion and for his commitment to Australian jobs and Australian industry. Few areas of our economy make the choices and direction of governments clearer than industry and manufacturing, and on that choice the contrast between this government and those opposite could not be clearer.

Wars, trade disruption and global supply shocks have taught us a hard lesson: when supply chains are fragile, Australians pay the price. We are seeing it with global conflict sending prices soaring, and we see it in businesses carrying the cost when international supply chains seize up. Australia has enormous strengths to build on: our workers, our resources, our energy and our ideas.

The Future Made in Australia agenda is about turning those strengths into Australian jobs, investments and stronger, more resilient supply chains. Rebuilding and strengthening an industrial base is not easy, and it requires a government willing to back Australian ingenuity and Australian workers. That is what this government is doing, because we know that countries are stronger when they have the capacity to make more of what they need themselves.

Through the Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme, the National Reconstruction Fund and targeted Future Made in Australia investments, including in critical minerals, green metals and our industrial base, we are strengthening Australia's economic resilience and sovereign capability. We are making sure our resources, energy, skills and ideas create more value here at home.

We are strengthening supply chains, bringing public and private investment, supporting jobs in our industrial heartlands and building the industries Australia will rely on for decades to come. It is about having the capability to shape our own future. My community was ground zero for what I often describe as more than just neglect from the Liberal Party; it was economic vandalism, a Liberal myopia that pushed Australia's automotive industry out of our country.

The story of what happened to Australian manufacturing is ultimately a story about choices. Let's put those choices into context. Around the time Joe Hockey was smoking cigars under the Abbott government, which budgeted the demise of our automotive industry and dared industry to leave, estimated per capita assistance to the automotive industry in Australia was US$17.80—an investment in a sector that was critical to our industrial base about the price of a footy ticket at the time.

Now compare that with other OECD countries. Germany provided US$90.37 per person. Canada provided US$96.39, France provided US$147.38 and the United States provided US$264.82 per person, nearly 15 times Australia's level of assistance.

These were countries that understood something fundamental. If you want an industrial economy, you have to back your workers. You have to back your supply chains and the skills that allow a country to make things for itself.

Those opposite looked at global industry assistance and thought they could be more royal than the Queen. The ideological obsession with outsourcing Australian ingenuity meant communities like mine paid the price. It meant destroying thousands of local, Australian manufacturing jobs in my community—jobs that families relied on and communities in my electorate were built around.

My community paid the price and Australia paid the price, because when you lose industrial capability you don't simply flick a switch and get it back. You lose the skilled workers, you lose the supply chains and businesses that grow around those industries, you lose institutional knowledge built up over generations and you lose the sovereign capability that comes from being able to make the things our country needs.

That is the inheritance we received from those opposite, but it's not a future that we accept. We are not prepared to accept the future where countries that invest in the industrial base have the factories, the workers, the technology and the sovereign capability while Australia simply imports the finished product. We believe local industry should have the opportunity to compete, to grow and to innovate here.

We believe in backing Australian made and the workers making things in Australia. It means skills retained here, supply chains strengthened here, businesses growing here and capability here. That is what we stand for.

The abysmal record of those opposite shows what happens when governments choose not to. After they destroyed industry, they sat on their hands for nearly a decade and talked Australia down. When it comes to choice and direction, we choose Australian manufacturing, Australian workers and Australian capability.

Under the Albanese Labor government, our direction is also clear: a future made in Australia.