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The Prime Minister’s announcement of the multibillion-dollar ‘Modern Manufacturing Initiative’ is shaping up as a watershed moment for Australia. This targeted, long-term strategy of investing in the nation’s economic sovereignty and resilience is a major milestone towards delivering a true National Security Strategy, explains senator for NSW Jim Molan.
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Yesterday’s announcement about Australia’s manufacturing future came from a pragmatic, focused and agenda-setting Prime Minister. It was a landmark by a leader who is listening to everyone and making the most of advice. The Modern Manufacturing Initiative has an achievable vision, clear priorities, and resources assigned.
The Morrison government has returned Australia to the ranks of manufacturing nations — one focused on the future and not pining for days past.
That said, the Modern Manufacturing Initiative is only one part of a long narrative by this government. That’s a narrative about how we need to build sovereign capability, train people for the future, and encourage innovation. It also adds to the Morrison government’s sectoral strategies in defence, shipbuilding, cyber security and energy.
Everyone with an interest in our economic prosperity and our sovereignty should be excited by this announcement and start looking for opportunities.
By assigning priority to four sectors vital to national security — critical resource processing, energy, defence and space — the Prime Minister has created a vision of promoting prosperity and sovereignty together. That is fundamental. These national goals are not separate — we are not looking through adjacent telescopes. We are looking through binoculars, where the imperatives of sovereignty and prosperity are merged into a single picture of Australia’s future.
This Initiative says that Australia is better served by spending public funds on innovation, market development and job creation rather than continued welfare.
Once mature, this Initiative will lead us to the situation where the big overseas primes don’t need to search for local content and make compromises: it will lead to a situation where Australian companies are first choice for work here and work overseas.
And the Morrison government’s timing is spot on. We must beat COVID first and get the nation open. But as we do that, we need to get ready for the post-COVID world. Being ready means we have a strong economy because that’s the basis for our national security. This announcement, when combined with others like those on banking and foreign investment, provides that essential platform for our future security and resilience.
As good as the Prime Minister’s announcement was, we are left with some key questions. Firstly, what elements of these priority sectors do we build to scale? Deciding what is critical to the future and where we develop comparative advantage will be important. Further, if we are going to collaborate more closely with likeminded nations to create alternative sources of supply, we might need to specialise.
This question implies a need to ‘pick some winners’. If that’s the way it goes, deciding those winners will be challenging. They must emerge from a robust and justifiable process. Bringing business into the conversation with national security experts is sure to produce well-rounded roadmaps that meet commercial and sovereign capability needs.
The second is, where are our vulnerabilities? The PM alluded to work occurring within government on supply chain vulnerability. That’s excellent. The next step is to identify which specific aspects of manufacturing need to be incentivised to make the nation less vulnerable to disruption and more resilient to shocks.
The last question is, how do we bring this all together? How do we bring the Morrison government’s strong sectoral strategies together to create a coherent, long-term and well-understood strategy that secures our sovereignty and builds our resilience?
Readers of Defence Connect would be unsurprised that my answer is to develop a National Security Strategy. This tool will provide a focal point for analysis, for answering the other questions, and giving Australia direction as well as speed as it moves into the post-COVID world.
Senator Jim Molan is a Liberal senator for NSW. You can find further insights into these and related topics at www.jimmolan.com.
