The Nationals reckon we can create 800,000 manufacturing jobs. It’s idiocy — but attractive idiocy for some.
While we’re used to the Nationals serving policy fantasies about agriculture — Barnaby Joyce’s delusional 2015 agriculture white paper is fondly recalled — they’re now keen to venture into manufacturing, with backbench coal fetishist Matt Canavan unveiling a paper on Australian manufacturing in 2035.
Canavan is nothing if not ambitious. Noting the long-term decline in manufacturing jobs, he says Australia can create 800,000 manufacturing jobs by 2035 — “an ambitious but achievable goal”. Except, there’s barely over 800,000 manufacturing jobs now, so that means a double of the current workforce; to adapt Canavan’s own graph, here’s what Canavan’s proposal looks like:
More correctly, it’s an “ambitious but utterly ridiculous goal”; perhaps it’s a typo and Canavan actually meant 80,000 jobs, reminiscent of Joyce’s trouble with millions and billions.
