Aussie made products vanishing from shops

April 19, 2009

“THIS is Australian,” says the salesgirl. “See here on the label? It says ‘Designed in Australia‘.”

She is holding a leather handbag and letting me see only the top half of the label. The bottom half is obscured by her red-nail-polished thumbnail.

I look at her. Her thumb moves.

“Made in China,'’ says the label.

She laughs. I can’t tell if it’s a guilty or an embarrassed laugh.

“All our stuff’s made in Australia, to an extent,'’ she says. “I mean, most of it’s made in China - but we’re a wholly Australian company.

“It’s all designed here.'’

We’re in Pitt St Mall in Sydney at 2.45pm and I’m conducting a little experiment: If I wanted to spend my $900 stimulus payment locally, could I find Australian-made goods worth buying?

Will I end up with nine pairs of ugg boots? I hate uggs.

In every shop, I ask if there are any Australian-made goods.

On every occasion I’m greeted with some degree of awkward throat-clearing or defensiveness.

“Oh, yeah, I know what you’re saying,'’ says one saleswoman. “I like to spend my money here too.'’

Staff tell me there’s no Australian content in Hype, Witchery, Nine West, Esprit, Just Jeans, Oroton, Emporio and Strandbags. At Surf Dive ‘n’ Ski, they’re selling green-and-gold thongs bearing the names Surfers Paradise, Bondi, Cottesloe, Maroubra.

All made in Brazil.

How about the flower stall?

“Ah, these ones are Singapore orchids - from Thailand,'’ says the florist, holding up flowers so blue they’re almost neon.

Laughing with an apologetic air, she adds: “Some of the others are from Africa.'’

In the 19 stores I visit, only seven have any Australian-made content - that’s 36 per cent. Only one, Jurlique, is all-Australian.

A shop named Glue has an Australian-made Backstage dress for $119.99.

Portmans has a healthy stack of local clothes and at Soul Pattinson pharmacy, there’s Le Tan, Sukin skin care and Nude by Nature makeup.

At Sussan, everything’s made in Asia except the nail polish and the lip gloss.

Then I get to Borders and it seems a gleaming ray of hope.

Of 28 books on the new-release shelves by the door, only five are printed overseas.

It’s an array of Australian-made words. Even the latest books by British authors Jeffrey Archer and Alexander McCall Smith are printed here. I’m delighted to discover such a beacon of localism, right here in the American chain store that locals love to revile.

Borders can’t be that bad, if even the foreign books are Australian-made, can it?

But that situation exists only because of protectionism: a long-enduring ban on the parallel importing of books, which the Government is now considering axing because it keeps prices artificially high.

So in this little shopping strip we have a perfect encapsulation of the Australian economy.

There’s a bit of manufacturing, a bit of protectionism, a fair amount of free trade - and an awful lot of embarrassment.

“We used to make it here but it’s just too expensive now,'’ one young salesman informs me. “It’s all Australian ideas, though.'’

And that’s the crux. It’s just the reality of our modern economy, right? Australia is no longer really about making things. Manufacturing is 9.2 per cent of our gross domestic product. Mining is 10 per cent.

Agriculture is 2.6 per cent.

We’re a services-dominated nation: retail, finance, law, tourism, education, transport, construction, hospitality.

The Pitt St shop girls are the economy, even when selling Singapore orchids from Thailand.

So why all the bashfulness?

Well, here’s one reason: The shop girls know as well as I do that it’s very hard to be sure about the conditions in those Chinese factories or Thai hot-houses. Are they as good as in Australian factories?

Do the workers get holidays? Are they paid fairly?

AussieBum underwear founder Sean Ashby is still horrified to recall the time he visited a Chinese manufacturer who wanted his business.

The showcase factory was clean, brightly lit and staffed by apple-cheeked employees taking regular tea-breaks.

Then he saw the real factory out the back: dirty, dark and stacked with bunk-beds.

That’s one of the reasons it’s cheaper to manufacture offshore. That’s why Ashby keeps his production in Sydney.

And that should be the issue that concerns us. I don’t care if products are made in Bangladesh or Bankstown as long as they’re made by people treated decently.

We can’t make everything here, or stand alone against the tide of globalisation. Protectionism won’t protect us forever.

But we can be inquisitive about what we’re importing. We can look beyond the embarrassment and think about how things are made.

We can read labels and ask questions in shops.

I haven’t spent my $900 handout yet. Turns out half the ugg boots are made in China anyway. What a relief.