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:
- 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.
- In order to build successful industries, there is a need for:
- High quality transport and communications infrastructure;
- Affordable and accessible education and training;
- Low-cost clean energy, and;
- Significant public investment in science and research.
- 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.
- 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.
- Co-operatives and other social enterprises are important for local economic resilience and distributing economic power.
- Publicly-owned development finance institutions are required to finance the establishment of new industries and transition existing industries towards more sustainable operations.
- Trade agreements should be rejected if they restrict the ability of governments to develop domestic industries.
- Local ownership of key strategic industries is important for maintaining sustainable domestic manufacturing industries.
- International trade policy should prioritise environmental and social costs and benefits to people over the profits of commercial entities.
Aims
The Australian Greens want:
- The development of industries that are critical for Australia’s environmental sustainability, economic security and social equity.
- Local production for local consumption wherever it achieves a positive environmental impact.
- Workers and unions to have a guaranteed say, and take the lead where possible, in the development of all aspects of their industry.
- 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.
- The public sector to use its purchasing power to increase demand for domestic socially and environmentally responsible organisations, including through content quotas.
- Government industry assistance to be subject to a rigorous assessment of its environmental, social and economic impacts.
- The end of subsidies and tax concessions that are given to environmentally harmful industries.
- 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.
- Provision of low and zero-interest loans, equity injections, and technical assistance to enterprises in critical industries.
- Protection of critical industries to prevent unfair competition.
- To encourage the development of export markets for sustainable industries, including those that are not otherwise commercially viable within the domestic market.
- Greater utilisation of Australian science, research and innovation through support for start-up cooperatives that prioritise the public good.
- The development of industry in regional centres in order to support the sustainability of regional communities.
- 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.
- 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.
- To develop a sustainable transport manufacturing industry in Australia.
- 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)