Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic targets overseas Aussies

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic plans to visit cities across the world that have ­attracted workers from Australia, in an ­effort to ‘regain’ the talent lost to overseas markets.

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic.

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic plans to visit cities across the world that have ­attracted workers from Australia, in an ­effort to “regain” the talent lost to overseas markets.

Mr Husic also said that while Australia would likely never again have a domestic conventional car industry, a local electric vehicle market was possible.

The Chifley MP recently joined Anthony Albanese on a visit to Indonesia. His faith was a point of focus during the trip, given he is the first Muslim to serve in an Australian cabinet, with Mr Albanese heralding the appointment as a “really heartening confirmation that we are maturing as a nation”.

Mr Husic has described himself as the “most impatient” MP in parliament and he plans to draw on this energy as he tackles issues such as regaining Australian talent and strengthening domestic manufacturing.

“It’s really important that we draw back Aussie talent that went offshore because they felt like there wasn’t interest or support in their home country, and to bring them back and apply their talents to grow our own economy,” he said.

“Instead of having a brain drain, it’s a brain regain. I’ll be ­visiting parts of the world where there are high numbers of Australians concentrated in different tech communities. The US, Germany, the UK … they’re ­actively trying to get our people because they recognise the quality and calibre of our talent.”

Skills shortages are evident across industries, with some firms turning down work because they don’t have the staff to fulfil contracts.

“I’ve already spoken to the department and told them can we please work out how to smooth out the runway to bring talent back, because skills shortages are a big issue and affecting the broader economy, but we do want to send a signal that Australia is open for business and we want to attract our own talent back,” Mr Husic said.

But he said in the near term those skills shortages, combined with the energy crisis and supply chain vulnerabilities, would complicate the task of recharging domestic manufacturing.

Once these immediate challenges are addressed, Mr Husic said opportunities like manufacturing batteries, energy storage systems and even electric cars in Australia would be possible.

“We need to be aggressively ambitious and think about that,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more ­opportunity to do this now than we ever had.”

Despite calling the demise of the domestic petrol car industry one of the greatest failures of government Australia had seen, Mr Husic said it was economically not viable for that to be resurrected.

“Once it (the domestic industry) has been pulled apart it’s too hard to put it back in the way it once was,” he said. “It’s much harder to make the economics stack up.”