HOUSEHOLDS are going to great lengths to keep their heads above water – working more hours or taking on extra jobs.
Just like households, governments need to manage their budgets and live within their means. But the Albanese Labor Government has shown an inability to do this.
Australia is in a full-blown cost-of-living and cost-of-doing-business crisis.
Despite that, both last week and this week in Canberra, the Government has gone to great lengths to sell their Future Made in Australia Bill.
You might have seen the Prime Minister in recent news cycles spruiking this plan as a great saviour of the struggling Australian manufacturing industry.
But what we have, plain and simple, is a multi-billion-dollar slush fund. This is a plan for more government, not more business investment.
And it is a plan for more inflation, at a time when Labor is already making it worse.
Australia has a proud and strong manufacturing industry, and the Coalition has always supported it.
Until those opposite came in and abolished it, the LNP’s Manufacturing Modernisation Grant’s achieved what this slush fund will not.
Companies in Forde directly benefited from the Manufacturing Modernisation Grant.
Merino Country and ATP Science, among them. They expanded the business, creating jobs and replacing imported goods.
That’s the real future made in Australia that our manufacturers want to see.
Now we’ve got Labor’s FMiA, and lo-and-behold, their first two projects have serious questions around them already.
The decision to award a billion dollars to a Californian company, overlooking Australian firms in the process, shouldn’t come as a shock.
In a media release issued by the Prime Minister on 14 May 2024, he was at pains to grandstand about Labor’s investment in backing an Australia-first future.
“Making our future here in Australia is about making the most of our nation’s potential,” the Prime Minister said.
PsiQuantum’s Palo Alto home is a long way from our shores.
Then there’s been the fumbling of their flagship solar scheme – Solar Sunshot.
This seems to be legislation that will provide a slush fund at the discretion of the government in the lead up to an election.
That should concern not just the manufacturing industry, but the wider public.
The policies we seek to implement are not just about the next election cycle – they are a foundation for forging a better Australia.
We’re in danger of having a Future Missing in Australia, not a Future Made in Australia.
