Opinion piece written by College of Leadership and Management WA committee member Mr Ed Scull HonFIEAust CPEng NER
There are many examples where support industries, manufacturers in their own right, were sacrificed to, or at least succumbed to the expedient of having construction and manufacturing conducted offshore. The major manufacturing resources represented by Holden, Ford, Mitsubishi, and Toyota have been lost. Our leaders would also appear to have been ineffective in arguing that the diverse skills and experience behind the narrow product lines represented by these parent companies in the US and Japan could be diversified and applied to achieve manufacturing practices that are in the future interests of Australia. Enter the buzz word ‘innovation’ that rapidly seems to be joining the lexicon of other tired words like sustainability, nanotechnology, etc.
As a first step we need to concede the bind we are in and that Australia needs to start from a very low base and to substantially rebuild our manufacturing economy. To “discover” that this will need both innovative thinking and practice is a no brainer. While it is likely that the attractive and highly marketable innovations in rapid prototyping, additive machining, robotics and the like will provide some boutique industries, it is more important that they play their role as the essential tools and practices of a resurgent industrial base. One has yet to be convinced that an “App” led recovery is going to meet the substantial need for skill development, job and career creation and sustainability into the future. Recovery will need more and it will need affirmative development.
Australia is going to need courageous and inclusive leadership at all levels of government, commerce, research and academia to address the challenge. Importantly, we will need to address a climate that appears intolerant of the considerable risk and longer timeframes required for return on investment in order to achieve substantial restructuring.
Australia has addressed such challenges before; a transcontinental rail supported by a commonwealth bank and the snowy mountains scheme being prime examples. Both of these were nation building and addressed basic infrastructure needs. They nurtured supporting industry. Speculate that we have similar need at this time and at the top of an expanding list one might consider rail infrastructure (both urban and rural), alternative energy systems and value added processing of our resources as different but not unrelated demands.
Import replacement should be a prime goal but with a view to selling the Australian product into a competitive world market when sufficiently proven. Envisage the Australian crop being hauled to market on a renewed rural/ urban rail infrastructure using distributed and serial power generation from renewable resources; conceived, designed, developed and built by Australian industry and funded in part by its superannuation capital. It must be do-able, but we need our leadership to work out how and to have the guts to invest in a future that is possible if we are prepared to further develop and harness the engineering potential Australia has to offer. Now that would be truly exciting!