Reports that Australian advanced manufacturer Tritium will close its Brisbane factory are devastating. The closure will result in 400 jobs being lost from the heart of Brisbane.
This failure sits squarely with the Albanese and Palaszczuk Labor Governments, destroying what little credibility Labor had left on manufacturing.
Tritium represents the very best of Australian innovation and manufacturing and is exactly the sort of Australian manufacturer we need to ensure Australia can transition to a low emission economy.
The closure of this factory is directly attributable to unaffordable energy costs and a failure of the Albanese Government to get the economic settings right for Australian manufacturers.
Time and time again Anthony Albanese used Tritium as a backdrop for his press conferences and as a totemic business to launch his manufacturing policies during the Federal Election. He even highlighted Tritium during his recent trip to Washington.
The very factory the Prime Minister used to market his politics will close thanks to his policies.
Labor’s much vaunted National Reconstruction Fund is proving useless as Aussie jobs go offshore.
With the Prime Minister overseas once again, Australians are losing their jobs, facing unaffordable mortgage repayments and a cost of living crisis.
Anthony Albanese’s failure to deliver an economic plan has led to the closure of this factory and that will hang like an albatross around the Government’s neck. Higher energy costs are sending Australian businesses to the brink and Labor does not have a plan to stop the squeeze.
While Industry Minister Ed Husic was overseas, alarm bells were ringing and now we have lost another Australian manufacturing enterprise. Factory workers in Brisbane lost their jobs while Ed Husic was focused on his next one.
Ed Husic will forever be the Industry Minister who killed Australia’s sovereign satellite industry program and instructed his Department to hide it from the White House. Now he will also be known as the Industry Minister who went missing in action while Australian factory workers lost their livelihoods.
Anthony Albanese pledged he would ‘build things in Australia’, but with hundreds of real jobs gone because of his failures, this is just another promise he has broken.