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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-01 Daily Xml
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Manufacturing Industry

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:41): Green steel and other advanced manufacturing possibilities can exist, and they will exist, right here in our state as long as we have governments that are willing to support them. The fact is that right now we do not. So much of what Australia currently consumes is manufactured abroad, particularly in China.

The pandemic has laid bare fundamental flaws: we simply do not make enough things, and our healthcare supply lines, amongst many, in times of crisis are reliant on the unreliable. More than this, even when companies can source supplies from abroad, basically they are incredibly expensive.

This has to change. We have to make it here. We have to make it well, and we have to make it available to Australians first. Well, why haven't we? As a former Dow Chemical Company CEO recently put it:

It is because up until now we have believed that free markets can do it all…Well, big news, free markets don't.

He is not alone. Doorknock someone these days and they will tell you: manufacturing has stopped being just an economic and trade issue, it is now about national security as well. If you doorknocked a captain of industry like Dr Jens Goennemann, the CEO of the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, a body set up by the Abbott government to promote the manufacturing sector, he would say something like this:

The simple truth is that if you want to play a relevant role on the international stage, and you cannot make complex things, you will [walk away] empty-handed…And, if you cannot make complex things, you cannot respond effectively to a crisis, be it a pandemic, a military incursion or global warming. It is not an ideological matter but a practical one: if the mining sector collapses, or there is a trade war and China stops taking our agricultural products, then what?

A valid question, Mr Acting President.

Dr Jens and I are not saying we will be building the world's first flying car next year but, in practical terms, I am saying that we should be looking at how to build products to sell to the world. To do this we need to start with industries that we already have here. How? I am glad you asked. Sanjeev Gupta, the Whyalla steel magnate, has put it most succinctly. He said:

It is incredibly important to have foundation industries from which you build the rest of the manufacturing sector…Big industries like energy, aluminium, steel, chemicals, fertilisers—these basic foundations are critical.

I could not agree more. Mr Gupta has put his money where his mouth is. In addition to guaranteeing not one job will be lost out at Whyalla and that all of his Australian operations will not be competing with each other, he is also building the largest solar farm of its type in the Southern Hemisphere as he moves his operations towards a modernised plant based on hydrogen.

I know that right now, governments are looking to get behind Australian manufacturing, and Mr Gupta's project is exactly the sort of project that they should be looking at backing. There is no reason why Australia should not be leading the world in modern sustainable steelmaking. The capacity to produce steel is critical to the kind of projects we want to see in this state, including defence projects.

The South Australian and federal governments can provide additional support to Australian steel by committing to using it in all upcoming infrastructure projects. I am not aware of even one major project currently underway for which the local Marshall government is responsible, announcing that it is using Australian steel or Australian concrete. How can I say that? Well, two years in, our north-south corridor sits unfinished. The Liberals' promise of a new hospital sits on endless, 'When will it start?' ideas. Will it start next year, or in 2022, or in 2024? More than that?

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Sixteen years.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: What happened to the Port Augusta solar farm, the Hon. Mr Dawkins? What happened to that? It collapsed under your government. And in defence, the submarines are lost in the same inbox that Mr Marshall's hospital announcement seems to be, Mr Dawkins. It lays there while Mr Marshall presumably awaits orders from Canberra.

South Australia cannot afford to wait for orders from Canberra. We need to act now to support existing industries to modernise and to take the biggest slice of the new manufacturing jobs that are going to be produced in the next few years, with the global pandemic affecting the world, to bring them here, to make it here and to make it well.

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