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.
Australia’s abundant wind and solar resources mean we’re well placed to produce the hydrogen a green steel industry needs. But there are technical and economic challenges ahead.
Rezoning to mixed-use residential development drove small manufacturers and creative producers out of the inner city. The result is less diversity of land uses, jobs and services where we most want it.
Patternmaker Paul Kay is now used to the idea of working by himself.
Jesse Stein
How WA managed to emerge from the mining boom with an estimated debt burden of $40 billion is one of the West’s great mysteries. Or not, if you bother to look more closely.
Manufacturing’s share of Australia’s gross domestic product has fallen from 12.9% in 1979 to 6.2%.
Image sourced at www.shutterstock.com.au
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…
Canada faces similar pressures on its car industry, but its approach has been opposite to that of Australia.
AAP/Paul Osborne
As Australian prime minister Tony Abbott arrives in Canada to talk investment and trade, both countries are facing similar challenges to their respective manufacturing bases, particularly in the automotive…
In China, there has been a shift away from traditional textile and clothing to computers and communications.
AAP/EPA/SHEPHERD ZHOU CHINA OUT
As Australia laments the decline of its manufacturing sector, China is actively taking steps to accelerate its move up the value chain. Historically a low-cost operating environment, China was once an…
Business has agitated for change, but is now wary of the negative impact of a tough budget.
In the lead up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? In this special series, ten writers…
Australia’s loss of economic complexity is leading to a primitive economy in which the nation’s share of the value of its products shrinks and living standards fall.
Marija Piliponyte/Shutterstock
Australia faces a fall in living standards unless policy action is taken. This is due to de-industrialisation and loss of economic complexity. The higher the economic complexity, the stronger the economy’s…
Manufacturing businesses involved in the car industry are facing tough decisions.
AAP
The recent decisions by Ford, Holden and Toyota to cease manufacturing in Australia have raised serious concerns for the thousands of Australian businesses who work in the automotive supply chain. Manufacturers…
A mini power plant in a North Sydney basement. Trigeneration plants like these generate electricity, heating and cooling far more efficiently than with mains power.
AAP/Short Communications, Girrit Fokkema
The debate about the future of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) has largely focused on the issue of immediate costs to business. But if we’re thinking about Australia’s long-term economic interests…
Software and interactive content development account for the largest proportion of creative skills in Australia.
ImagineCup
Australia’s economic challenge is now starkly apparent. In the wake of a diminishing contribution to our national income by primary commodity exports (think iron ore, coal), we need to “rebalance” the…
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.
Alan Porritt/AAP
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…
Incoming Director of the Australian Institute of Business and Economics at UQ, and Professor of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University