Industry and Manufacturing

Governments must play a central role in promoting, coordinating, and developing, a diverse range of industrial activities, and in ensuring they are sustainable, decentralised and resilient.

Principles

The Australian Greens believe:

  1. Governments must play a central role in promoting, coordinating, and developing, a diverse range of industrial activities, and in ensuring they are sustainable, decentralised and resilient.
  2. In order to build successful industries, there is a need for:
    1. High quality transport and communications infrastructure;
    2. Affordable and accessible education and training; 
    3. Low-cost clean energy, and; 
    4. Significant public investment in science and research.
  3. Governments should directly invest in anchor institutions, such as hospitals, universities, public sector agencies and transport hubs, in order to keep other industries in place and service the community.
  4. Governments have a responsibility to ensure that workers and communities reliant on unsustainable industries are supported to plan a staged and just transition towards sustainable local jobs and industries.
  5. Co-operatives and other social enterprises are important for local economic resilience and distributing economic power. 
  6. Publicly-owned development finance institutions are required to finance the establishment of new industries and transition existing industries towards more sustainable operations.
  7. Trade agreements should be rejected if they restrict the ability of governments to develop domestic industries.
  8. Local ownership of key strategic industries is important for maintaining sustainable domestic manufacturing industries.
  9. International trade policy should prioritise environmental and social costs and benefits to people over the profits of commercial entities.


Aims

The Australian Greens want:

  1. The development of industries that are critical for Australia’s environmental sustainability, economic security and social equity.
  2. Local production for local consumption wherever it achieves a positive environmental impact.
  3. Workers and unions to have a guaranteed say, and take the lead where possible, in the development of all aspects of their industry.
  4. Public investment in industry to have clear public benefit and to bring about adoption of environmental and social objectives including democratic ownership and governance structures.
  5. The public sector to use its purchasing power to increase demand for domestic socially and environmentally responsible organisations, including through content quotas.
  6. Government industry assistance to be subject to a rigorous assessment of its environmental, social and economic impacts.
  7. The end of subsidies and tax concessions that are given to environmentally harmful industries.
  8. The provision of free training and re-skilling programmes, wage subsidies, and employment connection schemes for workers made unemployed as a result of the transformation to a more ecologically sustainable economy.
  9. Provision of low and zero-interest loans, equity injections, and technical assistance to enterprises in critical industries.
  10. Protection of critical industries to prevent unfair competition.
  11. To encourage the development of export markets for sustainable industries, including those that are not otherwise commercially viable within the domestic market.
  12. Greater utilisation of Australian science, research and innovation through support for start-up cooperatives that prioritise the public good.
  13. The development of industry in regional centres in order to support the sustainability of regional communities.
  14. All design to consider a product's "end of life", with each step of the production process framed to minimise resource use, and increase value, quality, repairability and recyclability.
  15. To develop industries that add value to Australia’s primary production and mineral extraction, which excludes fossil fuels, with the free prior and informed consent of First Nations Peoples.
  16. To develop a sustainable transport manufacturing industry in Australia.
  17. To prioritise domestic manufacturing of equipment for power generation and storage from renewable sources.

(Industry and Manufacturing Policy as amended by National Conference June 2024)