The Changing Of Australian Manufacturing

This book examines the Australian state's changing role in post-war manufacturing industry. It provides a comprehensive analysis of federal industry policy since World War II and develops a range of arguments about the limits and possibilities of state-industry relationships in Australia.

The rapid growth in exports of manufactures from developing countries has unsettled the performance of manufacturing activities in many developed countries. Asian countries are heavily involved in the export of manufactures. Australia typifies the problems faced by the developed countries. How should Australia respond? Should it attempt to isolate itself from Asia? Or should it attempt to integrate itself with Asia? Is the removal of import restraints a prerequisite for closer integration? Or can closer integration be achieved by alternative approaches which are more politically acceptable? These issues are discussed.

In the modern era, the extent and character of technical change features prominently in discussions of productivity growth and movements in the competitiveness of manufacturing. While technical change is pervasive in modern manufacturing, it occurs unevenly. In this study, technical change is estimated by fitting dual cost functions for each of 38 sectors of Australian manufacturing over the 32-year period, 1968/69 to 1999/2000. The estimates show that technical change is heavily labour saving in all industries, but that the rate of change and the degree of bias towards saving labour, rather than capital or material, varies substantially across industries.