Treasurer Jim Chalmers has flagged substantial public investment likely including tax breaks and other incentives in next month’s budget to encourage industry.
The federal government has been challenged to provide $100 billion over the next ten years to boost the renewables sector. But will policymakers respond to the challenge?
Soaring electric vehicle production is giving new life to old manufacturing plants that were all but written off in the United States. Australia is also in a position to revive its carmaking industry.
Our interviews with ex-automotive workers reveal how economic change interrupts lives, casting people into new worlds of precarious work and long, indefinite journeys in search of security.
Anthony Albanese’s plan for high-speed rail between Sydney and Newcastle could well be worth the cost, so long as he doesn’t muddy it with 1970s-style industry policy.
The government’s announcement of a national science strategy is good for Australia, particularly for promoting engagement between science and industry.
A new culture is required for Australian manufacturing to be reinvented.
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With major employers heading offshore and employment numbers decimated, what will emerge from the ashes of Australia’s manufacturing industry? And what role should manufacturing play in the federal government’s…
Building an innovation ecosystem can take years of government nurturing.
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Our lives are surrounded by the ideas and creations of thousands of people. The magic of flight, or computers, or vaccines, inventions and innovations we take for granted, have advanced from one idea to…
With its competitiveness agenda, the Abbott government faces a politically fraught path to reform.
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The Abbott government’s Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda is an economic policy statement likely to define its term in government. The Agenda has four planks in the government’s efforts to…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the selection of five sectors for “growth centres” is not picking winners but “playing to our strengths”.
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Charis Palmer, The Conversation and Alexandra Hansen, The Conversation
The federal government has released its National Industry Investment and Competitiveness Agenda, committing around A$400 million towards “industry growth centres”, new tax incentives for employee share…
Corporate welfare? What corporate welfare?
Alan Porritt/AAP
The fuss about corporate welfare, deemed “unsustainable” by Treasurer Joe Hockey, appears almost diversionary considering the relative size of industry assistance in overall government spending. Industry…
Efficient manufacturing depends largely on scale, and Australia’s car production numbers have fallen.
AAP/Adi Weda
Now that the final nail has been hammered in to the car industry’s coffin, what does it mean for the Australian economy? As always, the data is a good place to start. Efficient manufacturing depends largely…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott is betting the rapid demise of Australia’s automotive sector can be contained politically.
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For the past 30 years, Australian automotive industry policies can be characterised as managed decline. Beginning in the 1980s with the Button Plan, the aim of policy was to consolidate the industry and…
The impact of job loss on car industry workers is multifaceted, and those arguing ‘better jobs’ will emerge could be fooling themselves.
Julian Smith/AAP
People change jobs constantly, and the jobs lost in car manufacturing closures are insignificant in the context of total job changes - no different to everyday job changes. So say some commentators opining…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane have drawn a line in the sand on industry assistance…or have they?
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Announcing the decision to refuse assistance to SPC Ardmona, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said: “I think it is a clear delineation of where this government believes we need to go with industry policy…