HMC insights

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To reach a business-driven PhD culture will take a systemic change and the obvious place to start is the tax system – it should start by supporting innovation, not making it too difficult.

AI has many strengths that we can use in our manufacturing and our R&D operations. But AI is not the same as a thinking human brain. It is a tool for the humans, but it does not replace them.

The Australian government has a job to do: to decide not just how we deal with President Trump’s intended tariff regime, but what we do with the responses to those tariffs from major manufacturing territories such as India, China, ASEAN and the EU.

In the 75 years since HMC was founded, it is now Australia’s largest independent grease-maker. But the company is much more than grease.

It is interesting that as Australia goes into a phase of R&D-intensive spending on renewables, critical minerals, defence, quantum computing, biotech etc, that we are not discussing the role of R&D and its influence on productivity and national wealth.

The global uptake of technology is accelerating and the nations that control innovation can carve a path for themselves that won’t be available to other nations.

The question of whether Australia continues to be a country where we make things depends on a number of factors: the price of imports, the cost of labour and resources, the desire of Australians to buy locally-made goods and the quality and design of what we are making in this country.