Re-shore the Industrial Base
Defence industry GVA is A$11.9B employing 69,400 people across 5,539 companies — but 45% of value added is professional/scientific services, only ~15% manufacturing. A nation that cannot manufacture its own weapons in wartime is strategically dependent in the most dangerous sense. The Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise (GWEO) represents the first serious attempt to build domestic missile and munitions production. Ghost Shark (autonomous undersea vehicle) and Ghost Bat (loyal wingman drone) are Australian-designed and manufactured. Nuclear power capacity — currently banned under EPBC s.140A and ARPANS 1998 — is essential both for energy sovereignty and for the industrial-scale workforce the AUKUS submarine programme demands.
Progress toward the Programme target — 0 means the transformation hasn't begun, not that capability is zero. Today's position is in the figures below.
Tracked Variables
Manufacturing (% GDP)
Lowest manufacturing share in OECD. Defence industry employs 69,400 across 5,539 companies but only ~15% is actual manufacturing. Long-run deindustrialisation means Australia lacks the industrial base to produce weapons at scale.
Nuclear Power Capacity
Currently banned under EPBC Act s.140A and ARPANS 1998. Olympic Dam holds ~25% of all uranium ever identified — yet civil nuclear is illegal while AUKUS trains ~4,300 nuclear-qualified engineers for sub reactors (incoherent). Programme: 15-20 GW by 2050 (~A$80-90B at Korean APR-1400 build costs), sited at retiring coal plants to reuse existing grid (the "transmission dividend"). CANDU runs on natural uranium = full fuel-cycle sovereignty, no enrichment. Cost objections cite stop-start projects (Vogtle, Flamanville); fleet builds (Korea, France) are cheap.
Recent Intelligence
This article evidences sustained US commitment to strategic decoupling from China in critical supply chains (semiconductors, solar), a key pillar of the Indo-Pacific containment strategy that Australia relies on. Polysilicon tariffs reinforce the US-led reshoring and diversification agenda, reducing China's chokehold on advanced-economy access to semiconductor and clean-energy inputs — a precondition for Australia's own manufacturing and energy-transition resilience.
Iron ore exports underpin Australia's fiscal position and resource sovereignty; strikes at BHP's bulk export hub directly reduce export volumes and revenue, weakening Pillar 1 (Resource Sovereignty) and Pillar 2 (Fiscal Engine) during a period when sustained commodity income is critical to fund defence modernisation and strategic reserves. Escalating industrial action signals labour-market rigidity and supply-chain vulnerability, reducing Australia's ability to leverage resource advantages in an era of strategic competition with China.
Australia's acquisition of the AIM-260 JATM as the first non-US operator, coupled with successful testing of indigenous solid-fuel rocket motor technology, directly strengthens maritime air-defence and signals deepening integration with US advanced-weapons ecosystems. This consolidates Pillar 6 (Maritime Defence) and Pillar 3 (Industrial Base) capability, reducing China's ability to degrade Australian air assets in a Taiwan-contingency or Indo-Pacific conflict.
China's decarbonisation of its steel industry directly threatens Australia's primary export revenue stream and fiscal sustainability. A sustained collapse in iron ore prices would erode the fiscal engine (Pillar 2) and resource sovereignty (Pillar 1), forcing trade-offs in defence spending and economic resilience precisely as strategic competition with China intensifies.
Advanced air-to-surface missiles directly enhance Australia's Maritime Defence pillar and Industrial Base integration, improving rapid-response strike capability against peer competitors in the Indo-Pacific. This procurement signal affirms RAAF modernisation within the broader Indo-Pacific deterrence architecture.