“It’s disgusting, it’s not Labor values,” Cain said. “Even the Liberals wouldn’t try that. A Labor government is making it harder for workers to win cost-of-living pay increases.”
It calls for the policy to be enacted through “tax credits or equivalent mechanisms to incentivise local manufacturing investment”, procurement policies that require minimum levels of local manufacturing and “expanded public ownership” of critical assets. Under the plan, infrastructure projects valued over $100m will be designated “strategic projects” requiring use of local content, while all government-funded projects will also require pay deals with unions as a pre-condition of tender.
“The world has twigged that … it might be cheaper to manufacture something many thousands of kilometers away, but then you’ve got to ship it and the emissions benefit instantly evaporates [when] you think about the emissions impact of that transport,” Husic told Guardian Australia on Monday.