569 DAYS AND WAITING – MANUFACTURERS NEED R&D CERTAINTY, MR CARR
02-December-2010
2 December 2010
Statistics confirming another contraction in Australian manufacturing provide the Gillard Government with even more reasons to abandon its plans to cripple research and development (R&D) investment in the sector.
It comes on top of yesterday’s national account figures, and provides further confirmation that Industry Minister Kim Carr has gone missing in formulating any response to the cocktail of pressures currently challenging Australian manufacturers.
For a Government that has said it doesn’t want to be in charge of a country ‘that doesn’t make things’, it’s also astonishing in these circumstances that it is still not taking action to scrap its regressive changes to national R&D tax laws.
These proposals to reduce investment in manufacturing have been widely lambasted by firms and bodies across the sector (including the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union), and Mr Carr ignores this self-evident point at Australia’s peril.
It has now been 569 days since the Government mooted its changes to the current R&D system, but it continues to baulk at any kind of resolution.
Instead, its only action is to lash out at the Opposition for apparently thwarting a parliamentary vote on the changes – when this is patently false and even a cursory glance of Senate documents and the Parliament House website disproves this desperate claim.
More than 73,000 manufacturing jobs have already been lost since the Rudd and Gillard Governments came to power, and the sector simply can’t afford more empty rhetoric, juvenile buckpassing and aimless policymaking.