The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) welcomes the Senate’s passage of the Future Made in Australia legislation as a demonstration of the government responding strongly to the calls to make things here again.
AMWU National Secretary Steve Murphy said the Future Made in Australia Act has been a long time coming and achieves two things that blue collar workers care about.
“This is a commitment to significantly invest in growing our local manufacturing industries including processing and value adding to our vast natural resources, and a program to decarbonise to net zero through real job creation which will re-industrialise our regions,” Mr Murphy said.
“We can protect our current jobs, expand our local supply chains, and build our sovereign capacity with highly skilled high-paying jobs in these regions that need them most.”
“Our members’ expect that as our energy needs change, we are creating good jobs and looking after those workers who have powered our economy and our homes for generations,” Mr Murphy said.
Mr Murphy urged policymakers across all levels of government to back government procurement, local content requirements, and coordinated workforce development as critical policy levers for success.
“We need to require things to be made here which means we need to implement a Secure Australian Jobs Code that includes a requirement for union agreements, and to prescribe minimum local content requirements through the whole supply chain.”
“We need to create a tripartite Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, and to provide a single-entry point for accessing capital investment to get projects off the ground.”
“Key to it all is investing in training centres of excellence that deliver nationally accredited, portable qualifications for manufacturing workers, where we keep apprentices on the tools and enforce minimum ratios of apprentices to tradespeople on publicly funded projects.”
“Having taken this critical step, we are hopeful that Australia can move beyond our ‘dig-and-ship’ reputation and capture the full value chain in renewable energy manufacturing.”
Media contact: Sonia Feng 0478 599 580