Making It Big

The manufacturing industry in Australia is in crisis, which means nearly one million Australian jobs are at risk. Yet, we’re told we’ve never had it so good. The resources sector is generating record export figures and in WesternAustralia, particularly, it seems like the good times are rollingand its bounteous mineral wealth will be our salvation.

Wrong – that is unless you subscribe to the “all your eggs in one basket” school of economic theory. Prosperity borne of an abundance of mineral resources is not sustainable in the long-term. Australia needs an innovative manufacturing sector to generate the research and development, future job training and knock-on employment in other sectors – and to keep many smaller regional communities viable and alive.But manufacturing as a percentage of gross domestic producthas fallen to 8.5 per cent. It was once 27 per cent.

The signs are everywhere you look. Workers in Adelaide and Port Melbourne had some cause for alarm when GM Holden recently announced that 2014 could well be the last year that its iconic Commodore would be designedand engineered in Australia.

At this stage, no job losses are predicted, but we’ve heard that before and that ringing sound we’re hearing is a warning bell for car manufacturing. [read more]