Thank you for all the attention. Now here’s how you can get involved

Thank you.

It can feel a little icky to pat yourself on the back, but here we go. We have good news to share. Fortunately, it’s not all about ourselves.

It’s safe to say that the current level of interest in manufacturing is unusually high. This goes from the average person concerned about whether there will be enough supplies when he or she goes to the store, right up to the top, where it has taken a once-in-a-century pandemic to make the federal government talk earnestly about why we might be too dependent on imported products.

“We need to look carefully at our domestic economic sovereignty,” says the PM. We welcome this enthusiastically.

This widespread curiosity has translated into an unprecedented growth in clicks for @AuManufacturing. We can report more than double the traffic in the last week compared to the average as it stood in February. New subscribers to our twice-weekly newsletter (go here and sign up if you’re not already getting it) are coming in at roughly triple the rate. We also welcome this enthusiastically.

There’s a lot of pain being felt by individuals and businesses. Let’s be honest. But there’s also a lot of good news to go around. And people are paying attention. There’s much to admire among the manufacturers who have or are pivoting, going from a completely different line of work to produce items such as crucial PPE or sanitisers or ventilators. Or there’s yesterday’s story about the outstanding Australian 3D printer manufacturer who has developed a new process to coat surfaces with antimicrobial copper. Wonderful stuff, all of it.

We remain committed to bringing honest, ethical coverage to these and other stories as Australian manufacturing rallies to both adapt to these crazy times and to decide what comes next.

Regarding what comes next, we’d like to highlight our “new deal for manufacturing” series, which launched on Tuesday. (More here on the purpose of our effort, which is being sponsored by Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions.)

This is where you can contribute.

We invite you to lend your experience and wisdom and contribute to this genuine grassroots effort. We welcome your analysis on what needs to happen next. How do we make the most of this moment, and of the welcome focus on the necessity of a strong manufacturing sector? How can policy-makers strengthen our essential sector?

If you’d like to contribute to the series, please get in touch and send us your articles. These can have a general approach, but would preferably focus on one or two key policy areas worth addressing.

These will be published in @AuManufacturing’s new deal series, with submissions synthesised into the Australian Manufacturing Forum’s New Deal Manufacturing Policy for Australia document, which will be referred back to readers and members for comment. Once complete it will be published and referred to the manufacturing advisory committee – led by former Dow CEO Andrew Liveris – of the Prime Minister’s National Coordination Commission. 

This is manufacturing’s moment. Let’s not waste it. Get involved today, and get in touch via [email protected]

– Brent Balinski, editor, @AuManufacturing

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