PM: Well can I welcome everybody to this first meeting of the Prime Minister's Manufacturing Taskforce, I know for some it hasn't been an easy journey to Canberra today, I understand that there was some flight delays so I thank people for getting here. Our job here today is to focus on the jobs of Australians, so we've got work to do focussing on Australian jobs.
We know our manufacturing sector is a diverse sector and there are some days of pressure on manufacturing as a result of our high Australian dollar, but I'm very determined as Prime Minister that we work with our manufacturing sector to ensure that we come through these days of pressure, that we have a diverse manufacturing sector that we take with us into the future of this nation.
So the work we're going to do around this table, focussing on manufacturing, focussing on Australian jobs, is very important to the nation's future. We come together at a time when the Government has been strongly focussed on manufacturing and engaged in working with each of you in various ways, but the purpose of bringing everybody together is to make sure we understand your up to the minute insights as to what was happening in manufacturing and to make sure that we are, throughout all of the instrumentalities and agencies of government, working as hard as we can together on manufacturing.
So this is a moment to roll the sleeves up - Government, business and unions working together for the future of Australian jobs in manufacturing.
I think whilst there are days of pressure at the moment, we also need to remind ourselves that these are days of opportunity and the future has great opportunities for Australian manufacturing. We as a Government are working hard on Australia's role in this the Asian Century, where our nation will get new opportunities as we see the growth in Asia and particularly the growth of the middle class in Asia. More than a billion people who will want the kind of things that we want and that will include elaborately transformed manufactured goods, it will include the best of Australian fashion, it will include a lot of things that people around this table make today and many things that we will innovate and make tomorrow.
So these are days of opportunity too.