I am absolutely thrilled that Labor has discovered manufacturing! They have been slow to grasp the concept, but I’m thrilled that they’re here. I understand that it’s going to take them a little bit of time to get up to speed. So I’m very happy to spend my time in this MPI talking to them about all of the work this government has done, is doing and will do.
I’m very proud of the commitments that have been made to support manufacturing. Many of the things that have just been said about manufacturing and this government’s view of manufacturing are patently untrue. We have demonstrated time and time again that we support manufacturers small, medium and large. It’s true that we want to support small manufacturers to become medium-sized manufacturers and our medium-sized manufacturers to be our large. In fact, that is what our plan is all about.
I want to correct the record a bit on some of the comments the previous speaker made. When Labor talks about the automotive sector, they are very selective with what they choose to talk about. They never mention that both Mitsubishi and Ford announced that they would stop manufacturing cars under a Labor government and Holden announced that they would cease manufacturing just months after the 2013 election.
As far as I’m concerned, we need to be focusing on manufacturing now and for the future. We know that manufacturing, along with many other industries, was hit hard during the pandemic. There’s many ways that you can talk about the number of jobs. But it’s important to note that, if you look at the jobs figures in manufacturing from February of last year, which was just before the pandemic really hit us here, we had about 5½ thousand more manufacturing jobs in this country than when Labor left office. Job numbers will continue to fluctuate over time, and it’s fair to say that about 70,000 jobs were lost in the first couple of months of the COVID pandemic.
But long before COVID was even talked about, this government was looking at how we could rebuild manufacturing in this country. We started with setting up industry task forces. What I can say is that the manufacturing plan, the Make it Happen plan, that we have put in place has been designed by industry, for industry. So when those opposite stand up and criticise the work that’s being done, basically what they’re saying to industry is that industry doesn’t understand its own businesses, doesn’t understand the sector in which it works and doesn’t understand manufacturing. Nothing could be further from the reality. We have some fantastic manufacturing businesses here in this country and we are supporting them.
The manufacturing strategy was about 18 months to two years in the making. During COVID we reassessed that plan to look at our critical needs to make sure that, in times of crisis, we could manufacture as much as we possibly could here. This needs to be seen in the context of the fact that Australia is a trading nation, we probably always will be, and there will be some things that we are unlikely to ever manufacture in Australia. What we need to do, though, strategically, is look at what we need to do in times of a crisis. Many people pooh-pooh what was done with the surgical masks here but it’s an outstanding story. Yes, there was only one manufacturer of surgical masks in this country, and it was producing about two million masks. By the end of last year, we had produced over 400 million masks. That demonstrates what capacity we can build here in manufacturing.
When we announced the strategy, we made it very clear that there would be a number of components to it. One was to look at our supply chain resilience. That work is underway. The second thing that is part of that strategy is the second round of the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund. That grant funding has opened, and it closed on 21 January. Assessment is now being undertaken, so we will have an announcement of where that funding will go. It will be to support businesses in our six named national manufacturing priority areas. So that’s immediate support that we are providing to Australian manufacturers in our key priority areas.
As part of our strategy, we said we would get the economic conditions right, and we are doing that. About $7 billion has been injected into the skills sector to make sure that we can develop the skills that are needed for the future. Everyone in this chamber understands the significant damage that Labor inflicted on the vocational education and training sector when they were in government, when they made 12 successive cuts to the support that is given to employers to employ apprentices. It was just appalling, what they did. Quite frankly, they brought that sector to its knees. But now they’re making, or trying to make, a story out of the fact that they’re going to rebuild a sector that they decimated. Well, that’s Labor for you.
Mr Dick interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O’Brien ): The member for Oxley!
Mrs ANDREWS: Yes, we have been in government—and thank goodness the opposition are not in government, because not only do they not understand manufacturing; they don’t understand vocational education and training either.
So we are getting the economic conditions right. We’re making sure that we do have the skilled workforces that all of our businesses need for the future. We are working on energy costs, because we know what a significant input that is for our manufacturers. We’re looking at tax settings. We’re looking at what we can do to support our businesses. We’ve made changes to the R&D tax incentive.
I think probably at this point what I might do is actually talk about the value-add and how important that is to Australian manufacturing. For quite some time, the focus in Australia on manufacturing was just the production part that was in the middle. The manufacturing smile curve demonstrates how big the manufacturing sector is here in Australia, and it demonstrates where the value-add actually is. The value-add is in things such as research and development; it’s in design; it’s in logistics; and, yes, there’s value-add in the production part in the middle. But there’s greater value-add as you start to come out on the other side of the production process on the smile curve and you’re starting to look at what can happen with sales, marketing and after-sales services.
What we as a government are doing is focusing on three things. We are focusing on competitiveness; clearly, resilience; and building scale. We’re making sure that we are looking at the value-added component of it. So there are three streams that we are focusing on. The big stream is the collaboration stream. That’s where we are going to be bringing businesses together, along with researchers, building the supply chains both here within Australia and externally. Work is well underway to develop the road maps that will input into that and the guidelines that will input into that.
There are also two other streams that are very important to us. One is making sure that there is support for those businesses that are looking to commercialise their good ideas. We know that commercialisation is where there are real opportunities for us in this country, and hence we’ve made that a focus of our manufacturing strategy. We also know—and this is the third stream—how important it is for our businesses, for our manufacturers, to be able to access international supply chains so that we can get their products injected into our supply chains overseas. Perhaps the best example of that is the commitment that we have made to Australian businesses in the space sector for $150 million in funding for our businesses to be able to support the NASA Moon to Mars program, the Artemis program. NASA has stated very, very clearly that we will be supporting our businesses, we will get them into the supply chain and NASA is going to get us back to the moon by 2024—
Honourable members interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members will stop arguing across the chamber.
Mrs ANDREWS: I understand that the members opposite do have a lot to learn in manufacturing, and I do encourage that. I do encourage them to make contact and bring themselves up to speed.