Industry Minister, Christopher Pyne, today demonstrated the level of his and the Liberals ignorance when it comes to helping the community and workers affected by the recent restructure at BlueScope Steel.

Today, in answer to a question about manufacturing, the Minister said that the direction to new advanced manufacturing and high-tech industries particularly impacts on areas such as Port Kembla in the Member for Gilmores electorate.

BlueScope is located in Port Kembla right on the border between Cunningham and Throsby. It is definitely not in Gilmore!

This just demonstrates the level of disinterest the Liberals have in our local community and the challenges we are facing following the changes at BlueScope, Sharon Bird said.

If the Minister had bothered to hold his roundtable in the Illawarra rather than dragging everyone to Sydney, perhaps he would have a better understanding of where we are and the challenges we are facing.

Christopher Pyne needs to get a map!

Stephen Jones said that Labor had put forward a number of suggestions which the Liberals refused to address.

The Liberals have failed to show leadership and failed to take up even one of the action items from Bill Shorten and the local MPs.

Not only that, Christopher Pyne today dismissively referred to manufacturing as the old economy. Out of touch Liberals like him might call manufacturing the old economy, but people in the Illawarra have only one word for it jobs.

The Local MPs said it was time that the Liberals stopped treating the Illawarra with disdain and called on them to implement Labors action items.