Governments and the Location of Secondary Industry in Australia

Abstract

T is well known that governments, in all types of economies, have an important influence on the location of economic activities of all kinds. But, on the whole, this aspect of the geography of manufacturing is not well documented. The Australian situation is interesting because each of the States is attempting to develop industrially. The resulting policies, undertaken in a spirit of competition rather than co-operation, illustrate one of the problems of a federal country. It is, of course, difficult to measure the exact impact of government activities because it is seldom clear whether these effects have been satisfactorily unscrambled from those of other influences. In the whole of Australia there are fewer than 250 factories with more than 500 employees so that discussions between government and leading industrialists on all kinds of matters can be conducted on a more personal basis than may be the case elsewhere. There is the story of the Premier of an Australian State who, having an hour to spare between planes in an American city, spent the time persuading the president of a large company to set up a rubber tire plant in his State. The story may (or may not!) be apocryphal but it serves to illustrate the highly personalized approach by politicians to matters affecting the development of their States and the difficulty of finding out the promises and persuasions which in practice have, or have not, had an impact on location.