Manufacturing Industry
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell—Manager of Opposition Business) (19:49): Australians can still make many things, and it's vital that we do have a manufacturing future in this country, but we have to note in this House that manufacturing's share of our economy has collapsed to just 5.4 per cent, the lowest in our entire history. In the 1970s, it was 15 per cent. Every month brings another shocking closure of the means of production in this country that are vital to sustaining any society. Alcoa's Kwinana refinery, 220 jobs, is gone, as well as all the business that goes on. Price Plastics, after 40 years of operation, is gone. Oceania Glass, Australia's only architectural glassmaker, after 169 years in business, is gone. Our battery pioneers, Redflow and Energy Renaissance, are all gone, all under Labor's watch.
We have to ask: why are so many businesses collapsing in manufacturing and industry in Australia today? A combination of high energy prices—the vital necessity of all manufacturing, energy; taxation; regulation; and our industrial relations environment in Australia. In Australia we can't compete on wages. We have the world's highest wages. You wouldn't hear about that from the government sometimes, but they are the world's highest wages. They will never be competed on. We also have the world's highest costs in regulation and doing business. We have very high costs now, the only competitive advantage that manufacturing used to have, for energy. In many cases, they're doubling—when these contracts come off—in cost. It's an input cost sometimes with heavy industry, with 40 per cent of the input cost doubling in price in one hit.
If Labor can't understand that its Future Made in Australia program is now heavily in danger of becoming a future bailed out in Australia, then they're not paying attention. The bailouts are in the billions. There have been four major bailouts this year. We had historic Whyalla bailed out, Glencore's facilities, Nyrstar and recently Tomago, which is now saying it will wind up in Australia. This was what the Labor Party said would not happen under its clean energy transition. It is happening. Australians know it's happening. They are losing their jobs. Communities know, when they see the means of production shutting down, it's serious for Australians. Under Labor we know electricity prices are now up 40 per cent, never mind this cheaper energy we hear about from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy every day—the free energy that we're going to get for an hour if we turn on the washing machine. Electricity prices are up 40 per cent. Australian industry is paying $10.30 a gigajoule for gas. Competitors in the US pay only $3. It's three times as much. In Qatar, it's $2.20.
When you couple that with the highest corporate tax rates for Australian businesses and people doing business in Australia—not just in the region, but one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world—there are no competitive advantages in Australia. This government is living in fantasy land if we think the taxpayer can then subsidise or bail out people when we've made the input costs the highest in the world.
When you think about what the government's agenda is, their productivity summit, their roundtable, completely squibbed the issue of productivity. We can't grow our way out of something when we don't acknowledge that productivity is the fundamental problem facing the economy. Government spending is growing at four times the rate of the economy. We can't spend our way into a productive situation for industry. But Labor's response has been to throw more government money at the problem. When you think about the $2.5 billion of taxpayers' money for Whyalla, $135 million for Nyrstar's smelters and $600 million for the Mount Isa copper smelter, how long can this sustainably go on? Even on the public purse, it can't go on. Every dollar that is taxed and raised and spent by the government takes private capital out of the economy. That's the way capital works. So the government simply can't afford to underwrite all these facilities for much longer.
Their $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia fund is fast running out. The future bailed out in Australia is here with us, and the money will run out very quickly. The one thing this Labor government will not do is lower the cost of doing business in Australia. Lower the input costs for business. Make the products and the manufacturing cheaper. Why not, and why is this government pursuing an endlessly increasing set of input costs and energy costs, driving industry and manufacturing offshore?