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Following the announcement of the Federal Government's Modern Manufacturing Strategy, Business Council of Co-Operatives and Mutuals (BCCM) CEO, Melina Morrison, writes that the co-op model can help deliver the innovation and growth that Australia needs by allowing SMEs to more safely scale and invest in research and development.
The plan recommends the establishment of two co-operative business development clusters around strong existing co-ops. The clusters will build business support infrastructure (investment finance, innovation support, professional services, labour sharing and other capacity building) that all co-ops and SMEs wanting to join them can benefit from.
International examples of this approach are found in manufacturing and industrial zones across Europe. Italy’s Emilia Romagna region in the north of the country, once an economic backwater, now boasts Italy’s most prosperous regional economy on the back of its agricultural co-operative cluster. In Spain’s Basque region, the Mondragon Corporation is a consortium of more than 264 industrial firms employing 81,000 workers. It’s Spain’s tenth largest industrial conglomerate with turnover of 12.2 billion Euro.
In Australia, the complexities of running a manufacturing business through bushfires, drought, floods and now COVID-19, are best understood by individual businesses at the coalface. In a co-op, this knowledge and experience does not get lost amongst competing shareholder concerns – it is the very purpose of their existence. They exist to co-operate for the benefit of the group.
The referendum on the First Nations Voice to Parliament will be the most significant national moment of this generation. Many Australians first heard of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Voice to Parliament when the Prime Minister committed to the Statement in full during his victory speech at the most recent federal election. However, nearly a decade's work sits behind the Uluru Statement itself, writes Bridget Cama.
Read more Opinion article October 24, 2022Today, we take from the environment, make new, then dispose. The linear economy has evolved to manage familiar commercial risks and opportunities, with little recognition that we rely on increasingly scarce natural resources and absorption capacity. Arup's Climate and Sustainability Leader for Australasia Joan Ko writes that the most sustainable product is the one that already exists.
Energy bills are currently front and centre in the public debate on cost of living. One way to reduce cost-of-living pressures is to actively lower prices of essential products and services – and at least one government is currently paying consumers $250 to do so. This may sound simple, but the devil is in the details, writes CEDA Senior Policy Adviser Ian Hamilton.