Senator Matt Canavan says successive governments have ‘dropped the ball’ on Australian manufacturing

Queensland’s Nationals Senator has given a mixed response to how successive governments, including his own, have “dropped the ball” on Australian manufacturing.

Senator Matt Canavan. NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Maverick Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has acknowledged the past 20 years of federal governments, including his own, have “dropped the ball” on Australian manufacturing.

Senator Canavan, who was in his old stomping ground of Toowoomba to help launch local MP Garth Hamilton’s campaign, said he would like to see more products made in Australia.

After being quizzed about the statement, the Rockhampton-based senator gave a mixed answer where he both noted the decline in manufacturing jobs in Australia while assuring the public that the industry was going through a “renaissance”.

“Over the past two years since coronavirus, we’ve got back up to more than one million people working in manufacturing,” he said on Wednesday.

“We were down to as low as 800,000 at the start of the pandemic.

“Australian governments over the past 20 years have dropped the ball on manufacturing, but there’s been a real renaissance in manufacturing under the LNP, because we’ve focused on the need to securing supply chains.

“We’ve invested in the Modern Manufacturing Initiative, we’ve made massive investments in defence manufacturing facility in Australia.

“Things are on the improve, but there is no doubt there is a need for greater emphasis on that and less than an emphasis on what people think of us at global conferences.”

Statistics from the Australian Government’s Labour Markets Insights report show that while manufacturing jobs passed the one million mark in August last year, by February they had dropped to just 854,000.

This is the second-lowest number on record over the past 20 years, with the trends showing jobs in the sector slowly declining since 2002.

World Bank data also shows manufacturing’s value was worth just 5.72 per cent of Australia’s GDP in 2020, way down from 13.83 per cent achieved in 1990.

Originally published as Senator Matt Canavan says successive governments have ‘dropped the ball’ on Australian manufacturing