ABMT Apparel director Andrew Quinn is calling on state and federal governments across Australia to give preferential treatment to local manufacturers for future procurement contracts.
Speaking on a panel hosted by Ethical Clothing Australia at the University of Sydney, Quinn said long-term contracts are a “game changer” for local suppliers.
Based in Melbourne, ABMT is a local textile product manufacturer with key contracts with local businesses, including Workwear Group and Stuart & Heaton.
According to Quinn, ABMT doesn't have any tenders for government projects, but confirmed the manufacturer is working with Victorian Fire Rescue.
“That's a 10-year tender,” Quinn said. “We've never, in government manufacturing in Australia or fabric manufacturing, had a longevity like that, where we can invest in machinery, staff, training, our facilities, knowing that that work is coming.
“The larger part of our business is supplying retail and brands, and that's fantastic, but there are myriad different things that can happen to that business along the way. The government contracts just give a manufacturing business a surety of future work.”
Quinn added that this isn’t just a personal want, but is also noted across the local manufacturing supply chain.
“If you speak to anyone in the supply chain in Australia, they do not want government assistance,” he said. “They do not want marketing proposals - like there used to be government grants around marketing - and all of those sorts of things.
“I would argue that everyone in the supply chain in Australia would now say what we actually need is work, and we need consistent work to do the right thing by our staff. We need to employ them. We need to be paying them well. We need to give them full-time work. It can't be casual. It can't be when we're busy.”
The panel Quinn spoke on was discussing the transparency, risk mitigation and bluewashing in the textile, clothing and footwear industry. His comments came after fellow panellist Dr Sarah Kaine, who is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, confirmed that the NSW government had recently scrapped a ban on preferential treatment for local manufacturers.
“The previous government had prohibited a local content weighting in New South Wales, so the government agencies were not allowed to show preference to local producers for any reasons, and they used that under the guise of international trade agreements,” Kaine said.
According to a media release shared by the NSW Government early last month, Minister for Domestic Manufacturing and Government Procurement Courtney Houssos had instructed the NSW Procurement Board to axe the previous Liberal-National Government’s prohibitions on local content rules.
“Those rules made it unlawful for NSW government agencies to seek, or even consider, local employment and business growth opportunities at any stage of the procurement process, harming local businesses at a time when they needed access to valuable procurement opportunities," the released read
“NSW government agencies can now consider local content and local development opportunities when suppliers bid for government contracts.”
Minister Houssos then issued a new direction to the NSW Procurement Board called ‘If not, why not’.
Under this direction, the NSW Procurement Board will mandate that NSW Government agencies engage with local NSW suppliers before going to tender for projects worth more than $7.5 million.
The new rules also mandate that if a contract worth more than $7.5 million is awarded to a supplier outside of NSW, agencies will need to undergo a ‘please explain’ process prior to the contract being awarded, outlining why a local supplier was not successful.
“Businesses and workers in NSW have so much to offer – not just to government but to all consumers,” Minister Houssos said.
“These changes will support our local industries and give them new opportunities to secure a larger slice of the NSW government’s $42 billion procurement spend.
“Our announcement today delivers the next step on an important election commitment we made to support local jobs and local businesses.
“The former government’s ideological zealotry harmed local industries, local businesses and local workers.”
Another fellow panellist, Be Slavery Free co-director Carolyn Kitto OAM, jumped into the conversation, saying that while the new measures on preferencing local businesses for government contracts is important, the process can get challenging when also ensuring ethical and sustainable factors.
“We did some work - not in this jurisdiction, but in another jurisdiction where they were weighting - where the education department was wanting all of the school uniforms that were purchased to be ethical, and by that they meant both socially and environmentally sound,” Kitto explained. “And so they were wanting to nominate preferred suppliers.
“We had about 25 companies put in to be a preferred supplier. We had a process for assessing them, and basically the outcome was, if they could provide the criteria ethical, they were not large enough to be able to deliver on the supply, and if they were large enough to deliver on the supply, they didn't have ethical practices.”
While the ethical companies needed help to scale, Kitto said the non-compliant companies were quite interested in how they could become ethical.
“But there was so little resource that was actually there for people to provide that help for them in how they can transform their business without paying a huge [amount] to be consulting companies who may or may not have been able to help.
“So I think that's still an issue around government procurement. How does the ethical actually get to the scale where they can actually buy into this?”