Is Australia’s ambition to be a global energy superpower in tatters?
This ambition was always courageous and at best a strategic overstatement and at worst a whimsy first propagated by the CSIRO and amplified by a willing Government without scrutiny or any commercial sense. The same might be said of the Future Made in Australia Act and it’s associated policies.
One of these policies is the Australian Battery Manufacturing Strategy (ABMS). Announced in May 2024 with an ambitious glossy brochure, its fair to say that not much has happened since. Some money has been released by ARENA to install batteries to advance the renewables Agenda, but a long time has elapsed between the brochure-ware and Government hype to program implementation to release of substantial funding. All the while, markets move on…
- Several Australian battery manufacturers have exited the market. This week Energy Renaisssance, a Newcastle-based Lithium-ion battery manufacturer and the only battery manufacturer in NSW, entered voluntary administration.
- USA tariff policy since April 2025, and US policy in relation to renewables and batteries, is also now a major issue. Chinese product previously destined for US markets is now flooding ‘open’ markets like Australia at highly discounted prices to shift excess stock and keep manufacturing plants running. China is known to be a battery manufacturing powerhouse. The Chinese response to the Trump tariff system is a first order unintended consequence, but a known strategy…
There are a few simple messages if the Albanese Government wants to implement an Australian Battery Manufacturing Strategy as part of its sovereign renewable energy supply chain:
- Articulate clearly why sovereign manufacture is needed so that national interest policies are transparent and make hard strategic and economic sense. Sovereign manufacture claims are generally poorly articulated with no supporting business case assessment beyond forecast jobs growth and economic multipliers which rarely eventuate.
- Make policy announcements with ready-to-go programs. Policy announcements are pointless unless backed by programs and substantial release of funds within 6 months.
- Include program requirements to ‘buy Australian’. Procurement can be regulated by simple rules to ensure price competitiveness consistent with the benefits of sovereign manufacture and local supply.
- Government must be prepared to back business while it scales and help business find offshore markets more aggressively. This is the reality of the messy ‘mercantilist’ global market we live in where our major trading partners are backed by modern forms of Government supported economic imperialism. The Federal and State Governments perform well below average by comparison. Government could embrace more aggressive use of anti-dumping policies to counter the indirect effects of tariff ‘wars’.
- Coordinate Federal and State Government grant funding and local strategies. The strategic question is not how one State competes with another – the Australian market is too small for competitive scale – but how Australia competes with the rest of the world.
The test for Albanese and his Cabinet is to work through what they mean by a Future Made in Australia much more rigorously. They announced it, but its currently a dead cat. How they perform at next week’s Productivity Roundtable will show whether they recognise how many of their existing policies work against each other and work against business, and how motivated they are to do something about it.
In the meantime spare a thought for Australia’s SME innovators – the people who want to succeed, build businesses and employ more people. Its a tough gig in a small market with a shallow capital base, surrounded by deep oceans and aggressive trading partners keen to flex their muscles. A bit like being a kite in a storm. There is always a decent chance of being blind-sided and shredded.
A Government job in Canberra, or anywhere, making policy and running programs before disconnecting at 5pm, with the occasional four day week and other benefits, seems other worldly by comparison.