“There’s no doubt that advanced manufacturing is the future for Australia,” said Martin.

According to the report, despite some recent policy positives, Australia is doing nowhere near enough to ensure the manufacturing of tomorrow flourishes. It charges that the nation’s industry innovation measures are appallingly underfunded compared to comparable overseas efforts.
The federal government’s five Industry Growth Centres – including the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre – initiative has been singled out against other, overseas initiatives such as the US’s National Manufacturing Institutes, Germany’s Fraunhofer organisation and others.
“They certainly need to be more adequately funded than they are in projections at the moment,” said Martin.
“These industry centres have been built on the Catapult centre concept in the UK, and we are only spending an estimated $190 million over four years, whereas the UK government is spending $3 billion.”

We have also done ourselves no favours with broadband speeds, which recently fell to outside of the global top 40.