Australia can make things : the challenge of manufacturing in Australia

Broinowski, Richard P.2022

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Summary

"There's a popular belief that Australian manufacturing is sick and cannot be revived. Service industries have largely replaced factory work. But the economy is highly flexible and inventive. And new secondary industries are emerging, not least in the energy, environmental and space sectors. Founded on agriculture, Australia expanded with mining and steel-making. Factory-based industries produced building materials, agricultural machinery, cars and aeroplanes, trains and ships, and scientific instruments. Much was for domestic consumption, but for export as well. Then countries to Australia's north began to make the same things better and cheaper. Foreign companies owned many of our factories, and closed them down. Successive Australian governments were indifferent to the problems or unable to respond. Protection and subsidies made for more inefficient industries and higher prices. Although Australians could invent things, they found it hard to commercialise their inventions.Was Australia doomed to be a farm and a quarry? Two Australian companies, highly successful at first, illustrate many of the things that went wrong. For three decades after the second world war, Kempthorne was the biggest lighting company in Australia, and Simpson's the biggest maker of household appliances. Both fell victim to mismanagement and failed to adapt to foreign competition.This book shows that Australians can avoid repeating past mistakes. It finds examples of world-leading innovation in the solar and renewable energy industries, in high tech initiatives, and in the manufacture of sporting goods. When Australians like the things they make, they make them well."--Back cover.