LABOR ALL TALK ON MANUFACTURING
06-October-2011
Julia Gillard’s embarrassing indifference to Australian manufacturing has been exposed yet again as her one-day jobs talkfest descended into farce today – with the belated establishment of a taskforce.
If Labor’s actions on past reviews are anything to go by, they will consume the time of a lot of good people with no policy outcomes at the end.
After four years of contraction, mayhem and 136,000 lost jobs under Labor’s industry policy vacuum, Australian manufacturing is crying out for urgent changes and strategic vision – but Ms Gillard seems to believe minor tinkering and further months of government jawboning will do the trick.
And, even after the futility of FuelWatch and GroceryWatch, she is now assuring the Australian public that they can monitor the impact of some of her policies on a website.
“There is no leadership, understanding or vision from Julia Gillard and Kim Carr on manufacturing – at a time when such qualities have never been more urgently required,” said Shadow Industry Minister Sophie Mirabella.
“They have finally been shamed into acknowledging the Opposition’s longstanding calls for urgent reviews of policy and for changes in the areas of government procurement and industry participation, but their announcements today represent an extraordinarily limited, weak and token effort.
“The Government is merely going through the motions – although such an approach is hardly a surprise coming from a Minister who recently instinctively nominated changing the name of his Department as his signature achievement of the past four years.
“Australian manufacturing needs more than changes at the margins and further Labor taskforce recommendations which will simply gather dust.
“The Opposition committed on 14 September to work with the Government on at least eight specific sets of policy actions – but there hasn’t been so much as a word of reply to us about bipartisan collaboration on that change of direction and the broader vision that is needed.”