The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, will establish a $15bn reconstruction fund aimed at job creation if Labor wins government, saying Australia must be a country “that makes things”. Setting up a contest with the Coalition over the post-pandemic recovery, Albanese will tell the party’s national conference in Sydney on Tuesday that the new fund will help revive the diminishing manufacturing sector which was already struggling before the Covid-19 downturn. An estimated 50,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost throughout the course of the pandemic. Albanese will tell delegates from the unions and party branches that the fund will seek to reverse this decline, putting Australia back on a path to “make cars, trains and ships” as part of a manufacturing revival. The jobs fund is the latest major policy announcement from the federal opposition after he announced a suite of reforms to improve job security in a pledge last month.

Source: The Guardian March 29, 2021 16:30 UTC