Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

To the Leader of the Opposition I say the position he refers to is an important position. We have been consulting and working with industry to get the right person to fill it. But even as that work has been happening we have rolled out measures under our Australian procurement statement. If I can take the Leader of the Opposition to those measures, because I think they are important for members of parliament to understand and for local communities, through them, to understand, that was a $50 million package which had, as part of it, buying Australian at home and abroad and to put in advocacy work for Australian suppliers. At its heart it also had procurement plans so that when we engage in procurement that we deal with people who have Australian industry procurement plans and participation plans so that we know that local industry will benefit. In addition, through that policy we have had other measures of ensuring that people in the private sector also have Australian industry participation plans. That has worked to leverage billions of dollars of new investment which has made a difference to Australian suppliers. That work comes on top of the investments that we have made in the new car plan, a plan of more than $5 billion to make sure we continue to be a nation that manufactures automobiles. All of this work comes on top of the other measures taken by Minister Carr through the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and the powering Australian ideas agenda.

Across the board we have been engaged with manufacturing. We have also been engaged with manufacturing through skills work, which is very important if we are to retain manufacturing in this country. It is certainly my aim that we have the right skill sets. They need to be broad and they need to be deep, which is why we have been investing in skills and I am pleased that that has deepened our skills profile, with more Australians studying at certificate III level and above. It is why we made $3 billion available in the recent budget so that we could better assist with skills and drive a reform agenda.

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question, but I also say that I really do wonder whether he can ask to be taken seriously on this agenda when the stated positions of the opposition on manufacturing are as follows: that they would cut $176 million from the textile, clothing and footwear strategic capability program—

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