Small business owners are calling on the Federal Election candidates to extend their economic plans to small manufacturing businesses and put a viable long-term strategy in place.
“Manufacturing isn’t something that has a three-year cycle,” said South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance (SEMMA) executive officer Adrian Boden.
“Manufacturing has a 10 to 15-year cycle.”
According to a report on The Herald Sun, Mr. Boden said too much of the manufacturing policies are focused on helping big businesses and a bilateral long term strategy to help small businesses should be implemented. Particularly, Boden says the government should cut down red tape around grants.
“As a small manufacturer, the company very often doesn’t have the time to go through the massive bureaucratic documentation you have to go through to gain access to the potential cash grants that are available through the governments,” he said.
“For too long manufacturing policy in Australia has been about short term solutions. Australia needs long term, strategic thinking to attract new investment and convince existing players to stay and prosper,” said PACIA Chief Executive Margaret Donnan.
Emphasizing that there’s a need to go beyond financial assistance for manufacturing, PACIA identified eight areas which the Government must act on to stop the business as usual approach.
The areas of action are access to natural gas as a feedstock (as well as energy), a balanced regulatory environment, a competitive environment to invest, a strong social license to operate, an innovative and strong intellectual property base, a strong customer base, a skilled and productive workforce and a stable financial and political system.
