Once, Australia was a land of makers, its heart forged in the fires of industry, its hands calloused from building cars, shaping steel, weaving textiles, and crafting goods that bore the proud stamp of "Made in Australia." From the bustling factories of Victoria to the steelworks of Whyalla, the nation's manufacturing sector was a testament to self-reliance, ingenuity, and sovereignty. Today, we stand amidst the ruins of that legacy, mourning the systematic dismantling of our industrial might, a tragedy orchestrated by globalist policies, short-sighted leaders, and a world racing toward crisis. As the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) warns, manufacturing has slipped into recession, with 5,136 established businesses shuttered in the year to June 2024 alone, and the few industries left are "rapidly circling the drain." This lamentation cries out for a nation betrayed, and foretells the dire consequences of a world hurtling toward chaos without the anchor of domestic production.
Australia's manufacturing was once a pillar of its identity. In the 20th century, we built Holdens in Elizabeth, rolled tyres at Bridgestone, and crafted glass for iconic buildings like Parliament House. The textile mills of the 1980s employed tens of thousands, clothing a nation with pride. Kingaroy's peanut silos stood as sentinels of local agriculture, churning out peanut butter for a century. Yet, one by one, these industries have fallen. Holden's last car rolled off the line in 2017, Bridgestone's tyres stopped in 2010, and Oceania Glass collapsed in 2024, unable to compete with cheap Chinese and Thai imports. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that manufacturing now accounts for a mere 5% of GDP, down from 14% in the 1970s, the lowest in the OECD.
This is no natural decline but a deliberate unmaking. The dismantling of tariffs in the 1980s under Hawke and Keating opened the floodgates to cheap imports, gutting textiles and clothing, reducing employment in these sectors from 92,200 in 1985 to under 1,000 today. High labour costs, uncompetitive against Asian sweatshops, and soaring energy prices, gas up 48% since 2019, have crippled energy-intensive industries like steel and plastics. Qenos, Australia's last plastics maker, collapsed in 2023, and Whyalla Steelworks teeters on the edge, losing $1.5 million daily. The closure of Opal Australian Paper's white paper production in 2022, triggered by a court ruling limiting timber supply, ended a national capability overnight. Even peanut butter, a staple of Australian childhoods, is no more, with Bega's Kingaroy plant set to close by 2026, costing 150 jobs.
This devastation is the fruit of globalist dogma, embraced by leaders who traded sovereignty for the mirage of free trade. The mantra of "open markets" and "global supply chains" promised prosperity but delivered dependence. Australia's car industry was abandoned when subsidies were cut, deemed unviable in a market flooded with cheap imports. The Australian dollar's strength during the mining boom, coupled with negligent energy policies, made manufacturing uncompetitive, as Roy Green notes. The failure to reserve East Coast gas supplies has driven prices to unsustainable levels, forcing closures like Qenos and threatening steel. Meanwhile, nations like South Korea protect their industries with cultural and governmental resolve, while Australia's leaders celebrate the "utopian" free trade that has hollowed out our economy.
The globalist agenda has left Australia vulnerable, tethered to volatile supply chains and foreign producers. The Ai Group highlights trade risks, with $11.5 billion in manufactured exports to the US now facing tariffs of up to 60%. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of this dependence, with shortages of everything from medical supplies to basic goods. Yet, instead of rebuilding local capacity, Australia doubles down on net-zero policies that inflate energy costs, driving manufacturing offshore while exporting emissions to China. This is not progress but surrender, a nation reduced to a consumer, not a creator.
Behind the numbers are shattered communities and broken dreams. The 930,000 manufacturing workers, once the backbone of the middle class, face an uncertain future. Skills shortages, with 61% of trades and technician roles unfilled, choke the sector's ability to recover. In Kingaroy, the closure of the Peanut Company of Australia is "devastating," as Mayor Kathy Duff laments, erasing a century of heritage and 150 livelihoods. In Whyalla, workers watch as their steelworks, a symbol of industrial pride since 1941, bleeds money under mismanagement and global competition. The Latrobe Valley mourns 200 jobs lost at Opal's Maryvale mill, a casualty of environmental rulings that value possums over people. These are not just jobs but identities, rooted in communities now left to wither.
The social fabric frays as manufacturing declines. The Ai Group notes that 80% of new jobs in 2023 were in the public sector or government-funded industries like the NDIS, masking the erosion of private-sector vitality. A nation where one in five workers is a bureaucrat is not a nation building for the future. The loss of manufacturing hollows out innovation, with the sector's 4.1% reinvestment in R&D, highest of any industry, now at risk. As Innes Willox warns, this recession drags on Australia's aspirations to be a high-tech, high-productivity economy.
The world is not the stable marketplace globalists promised. Geopolitical tensions, trade wars, and supply chain disruptions loom large. US tariffs threaten Australian exports, while conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East spike energy costs. A global economic slowdown, with Australia's GDP growth at a mere 1.3% in 2024, signals fragility. Without domestic manufacturing, Australia is naked before these storms. We cannot produce cars, tyres, glass, or even paper to meet our needs in a crisis. Our reliance on imports, particularly from a China that dominates global supply chains, is a strategic vulnerability. The pandemic showed how quickly shortages can cripple a nation; the next crisis, be it war, trade collapse, or natural disaster, will hit harder.
The obsession with net-zero policies, insane in themselves, accelerates this vulnerability. High energy costs, driven by the shift from coal and gas to renewables without adequate planning, have "destroyed Australia's energy advantage," as critics note. Manufacturing, which requires cheap, reliable power, cannot survive when gas prices are 48% higher than in 2019. As other nations protect their industries, Australia exports its coal and gas, empowering competitors while starving its own. In a world of rising protectionism and fracturing alliances, a nation without industrial capacity is a nation at the mercy of others.
This lament is not just for what was lost but for what must be reclaimed. Australia must reject the global globalist fantasy and embrace a nationalist vision of self-reliance. We need policies that prioritise local industry: reinstate tariffs to shield manufacturers from cheap imports, reserve gas supplies for domestic use, and invest in training to address the 61% vacancy rate in trades. The $22.7 billion in manufacturing grants is a start, but it must be paired with a cultural shift to value Australian-made goods, as South Korea does. Treasurer Jim Chalmers' upcoming economic roundtable must heed Ai Group's call for reforms in energy, workforce, and productivity, or risk further decline.
The alternative is grim. A nation that makes nothing is a nation that controls nothing. As global crises mount, Australia's dependence on foreign goods will leave it exposed, economically, strategically, and culturally. The ghosts of Kingaroy's silos, Whyalla's steelworks, and Holden's factories warn us: rebuild now, or face a future where Australia is but a shadow, consigned to oblivion.