Mr CHAMPION (Wakefield) (20:43): It is a great pleasure to be talking about manufacturing in the House again. We have to thank the member for Throsby, who has been a tireless advocate of his electorate and of manufacturing generally. I think he has been one of the people who has really rammed home and helped to explain, not just to this House but also to the Australian people, some of the challenges that manufacturing now faces. We have heard a lot about the two-speed economy. Last year we had a pretty torrid debate about the mining sector and whether or not they should be taxed. We are now starting to see, I think, the effects of a high currency, a currency that is a reflection of our economic success—let us not hide from that. Having a high currency does bring us benefits in higher prices for our exports. It lowers import costs and input costs. It is an important thing. It is a sign of the world's confidence in this country and its future, so we should acknowledge the benefits of the high currency and not be shy about that. We should also understand that the economy has been growing and jobs have been growing throughout this period. Despite a global financial crisis, despite the two-speed economy, despite a high currency, jobs continue to grow. We heard that from the previous speaker, the member for McPherson, who talked about manufacturing companies in her electorate which were continuing to put on employees and, indeed, could not find skilled labour. It is interesting to hear some of the more balanced contributions from some of those opposite—those who say that we do have a lot to be happy about and to celebrate in this country. There is no doubt that this period does bring some challenges for manufacturing. We face a situation where a high dollar is putting pressure on our industries. That is not something that is unique to Australia. If you look at Brazil, they have got problems with currency appreciation, and, most recently, the Swiss have had problems with the franc rapidly appreciating. So this is a problem that is present around the world. We have heard a lot about Dutch disease and the perils of that, and that is one of the reasons the government is bringing the budget back into surplus. It is one of the reasons we are introducing a minerals resource rent tax, and it is one of the reasons why we have got a big investment into skills in this country. It is interesting to hear those opposite talk about skills. I do think that this issue needs a long-term discussion and I think we do need a bit of goodwill on both sides. Just simply slinging insults at one another will not help. We should, where possible, seek out areas of common interest in the national interest, and I do think skills might be one of those. Opposition members interjecting Mr CHAMPION: Peace in our time! Don't worry, I'll get stuck into you later on. I think we have probably always got more in common than we have differences. I think the country basically faces a choice between co-investment and capitulation. We either capitulate to these market forces, run up the white flag and let jobs move offshore and say that manufacturing is dead, and maybe just accept that that is part of the process of a strong currency and high prices for our minerals, or we have co-investment. I have seen this co-investment in my own electorate with Holden and an investment of $149 million to develop the Cruze, now the No. 3 selling car in Australia, and an extra 265 jobs at Holden. This is a product which is selling, and you can tell it is selling, because wherever you go, in the supermarket car parks of this country, there are Cruzes driving around. I would urge those opposite to look at that. We now see it with the Commodore and $40 million invested in developing the Commodore with new lightweight panels and new technology to make them more efficient. Again, we have got more secure jobs. We saw it at Holden with our big investments during the global financial crisis where the company did have some difficulties with demand, and so the government and the company had a co-investment in training the workforce. During that down time, rather than people being off work they were in training, preparing for the launch of the Cruze. So we see that where co-investments are made we can have productive, profitable companies and we can have companies that are domestically successful. I have every confidence that in the future they will be successful with exporting police cars to the United States. We are not alone in this. The United Kingdom have recently invested £200 million. They had one particular plant with Nissan—a battery plant where they co-invested £20 million to get that in place. This is something that is happening all over in other countries. Other countries help by tariffs. India has got a tariff of 105 per cent—to give people some understanding of the international environment. We see that where we have co-investment we have success. While some of those opposite, like the member for Mayo, the Marty McFly of the parliament—he has a great love of Back to the Future—focuses on places like Mitsubishi and the hard-luck stories, I prefer to focus on the success stories that we have had in the last few years under this government's program. We know that the Liberal Party oscillate between reassurance on one side of it—they have got all these vague reassurances on one hand and not really talking about their policies; some of them come in here very reassuringly about jobs and then they rattle on about the carbon tax for a while—and the other side of it is pretty significant. We have the member for Mayo perhaps sending messages more to his own party than to this side of parliament about co-investment. He talks about the enormous markets of the flat world. You might want to tell that to the Indians, with the 105 per cent tariff, or Thailand, where they have about 80 per cent tariff on Commodores. When we first introduced these assistance measures to the car industry, Tony Abbott said: 'There have been a lot of assistance packages for the car industry, and the real issue for any future package is: just how long is this going to last? Will the car industry in this country ever be able to stand on its own two feet? Will Kevin Rudd be able to give a guarantee that any new package of assistance really will be the last package?' We have that undermining. Before Tony Abbott was Leader of the Opposition he would maybe have told a different story today to car workers in South Australia; maybe he would not. We had Joe Hockey say: 'I don't know that it is necessarily the right thing to hand money immediately to the motor vehicle industry in Australia without knowing whether those key companies are going to be merging or won't even exist in 12 months.' That is what he said in 2007, when we put in place our co-investment plan. The opposition are very clear about what they will do, in many respects. They talk in circles, there are lots of reassurances and lots of banging on about the carbon tax, but, when you get right down to it, they will cut $500 million out of the Automotive Transformation Scheme. That is what they will do. They will put the sledgehammer to jobs in South Australia and Victoria and manufacturing jobs in New South Wales. We hear the member for Mayo talking about Mitsubishi. That is what he wants to talk about all the time. He wants to talk about the stories of job losses. That is what they want to talk about; they do not want to talk about the successes. This country does have a choice. We have a choice between co-investment, which is the Labor way, which is investing in research, high technology, exports that are going to sell and having a manufacturing sector at the end of this whole process of our terms of trade; or the Liberal Party way, which will be capitulation, which will be to run up the white flag to say we cannot compete and to simply rely on an unrestrained, untaxed mining sector which will simply run rampant. When they have finished digging, they will be off and that will be the end of it. The Labor way is to provide jobs and a stable and diverse economy for the long term.