Just a flesh wound

摘要

The February cover on manufacturing reminded me of the brave words of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, fighting on after all his limbs were severed. For all the buzzwords in the article, the statistics in the box ('A snapshot of the 1manufacturing industry' on p. 45, general edition) told the true story. Both employment and value-added numbers have been in decline for years. With the end of the auto industry, the figure of 128,000 employed in machinery and equipment manufacture will shortly have at least one digit lopped off. In my patch, the rail industry, where Australian manufacturers made nearly all our rolling stock as recently as 10 years ago, overseas manufacture is now the default. Capability and innovation count for little when things are 25% cheaper from Asia. This applies to both government and private sector sourcing.