Manufacturing Green Paper

The Academy supports this initiative and notes that manufacturing is a matter of great importance to Australia. The Manufacturing Green Paper (henceforth referred to as ‘the Paper’) is overall an excellent document for which the Department is to be commended. It is critical that South Australia focusses its efforts on the areas in which the State has, or might realistically derive in time, genuine competitive advantage leading to significant economic benefit. The following comments, prepared by the ATSE South Australian Division, outline areas that the Academy feels should be focused on in the development of the final Manufacturing Strategy (henceforth referred to as ‘the Strategy’).

In responding to the green paper the Academy has considered the recommendations from the 2011 Goran Roos paper, ‘Manufacturing in to the future‘, recognising the key importance of this paper to the final Manufacturing Strategy. The Academy strongly supports the proposition by Professor Roos that ‘a healthy manufacturing sector is a must for any advanced economy”. The Academy feels that the future of SA manufacturing will have a key focus in advanced technological areas that depend on strong intellectual property. In many cases this will be in entirely new or niche market opportunities, characterised by high returns and specialised skills, and necessitate careful consideration of issues surrounding intellectual property. Whilst final manufacture may be conducted off-shore in some cases, in building a depth and breadth of innovative companies in the Australian advanced manufacturing sector, much of the value will be retained in SA. This future may be typified by a large number of smaller, highly innovative and networked manufacturing companies, rather than large corporations or divisions of multi-nationals.