Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 19—Manufacturing 711
Introduction
Manufacturing broadly relates to the
physical or chemical transformation of
materials or components into new products,
whether the work is performed by power-driven
machinery or by hand.
The manufacturing industry is an important
sector of the Australian economy, contributing
around 13% of Australia’s gross domestic product
(GDP) and around 12% of employment.
However, despite significant increases in the
value of the manufacturing industry’s gross value
added (by more than 15% over the past ten
years), the industry’s share of Australian GDP has
fallen over the past 20 years from around 18% to
its current level of 13%.
Similarly, employment in the manufacturing
industry has fallen from around 1.1 million
persons 20 years ago to 937,000 persons at
June 1999.
This chapter presents a range of data about the
manufacturing sector as a whole, and about
broad categories of manufacturing industry.
These categories are referred to as ‘subdivisions’.
Some data are provided from the annual
manufacturing survey, for which the latest results
relate to 1998–99, while others, also relating to
1998–99 in most instances, have been derived
from various monthly and quarterly surveys.
Manufacturing from settlement to the start of the new
century
Before Federation
The first Australian factories were based on the
waterfront—repairing visiting vessels, brewing
beer and making biscuits. The early
industrialisation of the late 19th century led to
an expansion into the fringe suburbs of the
main coastal settlements, creating thousands of
new jobs for boilermakers, engineers, iron
founders and brickmakers. The decline in
goldfields activity earlier in the century had left
many English immigrants unemployed and, as
was said, “threw them into” the newly
industrialised workforce and suburbs. At the
end of the century, despite rapid
industrialisation the manufacturing sector was
still dominated by many smaller factories. Even
in Victoria, the most industrialised colony,
factories of more than fifty employees drew only
half of the registered workforce. The older
trades in small workshops, such as
saddlemaking, coachbuilding and dressmaking,
still outnumbered the new, expanding
engineering trades developed by the
burgeoning tram and railways industries.
Federation to Depression
Federation and the dismantling of interstate
tariffs allowed the manufacturing sector to trade
and prosper across the nation. Total
employment in the sector rose from 190,000 in
1903 to 328,000 in 1913. However,
proportionally the sector remained small,
contributing only 13% of GDP in 1911.
International protective tariffs allowed the
sector to grow more strongly as did the
requirements of World War I. Federal
population policies after the war depended on
the steady growth of the manufacturing sector,
under the protection of tariffs. The sector
facilitated high rates of post-war immigration at
a time when Australian rural export industries
were actually shedding labour. The Newcastle
Steelworks were opened during the war and
hastened the growth and diversification of
metal-working industries.
By 1929, 440,000 people were employed in
Australian manufacturing. The previously
dominant clothing and textiles industry had
steadily declined in employment, while the
metals and machinery industry emerged as a
major contributor to both employment and
production. In particular, the new motor vehicle
industry of the 1920s strengthened this sector.
With Holden already well established, Ford soon
followed with a large motor body assembly
plant in Geelong, in response to the growing
demand for motor cars.