And No One Wants to Admit It
Australia loves to talk about creativity. We love to post about it, celebrate it, hashtag it, commission a mural for National Arts Day and call it “support.” But when you scratch beneath the marketing, you find a hard truth most of the fashion and design sector refuses to say out loud: this country has almost no textile manufacturing ecosystem left.
We barely make the fabric that our designers rely on. We grow world-class fibres and then export them as raw commodities, only to import them back as expensive finished fabric and pretend we have a fashion economy. It’s a creative illusion — and an economic disaster.
The dominant narrative says Australia “has a thriving creative industry.” It’s the line rolled out every time there’s a government announcement, a festival program, or another glossy campaign celebrating the arts. But those narratives conceal an industrial absence so large it barely feels real. ABS and IBISWorld data point to the same bleak picture: less than 1% of apparel textiles used in Australia are milled here; over 95% of fabric is imported; the last significant spinning and weaving mills have either closed, shifted offshore, or survive on micro-scale production unsuitable for national industry. There is no national provenance system, no certification mark that protects Australian-made textiles, no equivalent of Harris Tweed, Irish Linen, Scottish Cashmere or Japan’s heritage textile guilds.
This is not a minor gap — it is the structural void that stops Australia from having a real creative economy. You cannot build an industry without an industry. You cannot build cultural exports without the ability to produce. You cannot claim creative leadership while outsourcing nearly every part of your supply chain.
The CWA lens reframes this as more than an economic oversight — it is a systems failure. Creativity is treated as sentiment, not structure. As something nice, not necessary. Women make up the majority of Australia’s creative labour force — designers, makers, costumers, illustrators, regional artisans, community teachers, cultural producers — yet there is no national workforce framework, no certification, no recognised pathway, and no infrastructure that acknowledges creativity as an economic engine. Instead, we get the annual “arts celebration” days. The photo ops. The platitudes. The superficial initiatives that do nothing to secure real creative livelihoods.
A genuine creative economy would treat creativity the way Harris Tweed treats weaving: as labour, as heritage, as industry, as intellectual property. Harris Tweed thrives not because Scotland simply “cares about the arts,” but because the government intervened structurally. They protected the story through legislation. They created a certification mark. They embedded regional craft into national identity. They built an economy from provenance — not slogans.
Imagine applying that model here. Australia has some of the best wool and cotton in the world. We have a rich textile heritage. We have skilled regional communities capable of weaving, knitting, spinning, dyeing, and designing. And we have the national hunger for authenticity — consumers want Australian-made more than ever.
What we don’t have is the system. No certification. No provenance protection. No national authority establishing standards. No economic scaffolding that verifies where fibre comes from, who made it, how it was produced, and what region it belongs to.
And so we end up with the world’s most ironic fashion identity: a country that could lead the textile world — yet imports nearly everything. A country with the raw materials but without the mills. A nation with the stories but not the systems to protect them.
The reframe is simple: Australia doesn’t need another “celebration day” for the arts. It needs a creative economy — a real one. One built from infrastructure, not slogans. One grounded in place, provenance, manufacturing, certification, and regional industry. One where creativity isn’t a hobby or a PR exercise but a workforce, a sector, and a protected national asset.
When you formalise provenance, you formalise power. You protect craft. You create industry. You give designers a stable supply chain. You give regions an economic future. You give the country a globally recognised cultural export. And you give women — the backbone of Australia’s creative labour force — a pathway into secure, regulated, professionalised work.
This is what the creative sector needs most: not symbolic celebration, but structural recognition. Not arts day campaigns, but legislation. Not holiday hashtags, but national certification, national workforce mapping, and an actual plan to grow Australia’s creative economy into a global force.
Because the truth is embarrassingly obvious: creative work should already be an economy. The fact that it isn’t is the real scandal.
Australia can build a future where provenance is protected, where textiles are produced onshore again, where creative labour is a recognised workforce, and where our national stories aren’t outsourced or imported back to us. The blueprint exists. The global examples are everywhere. All that’s missing is the will to treat creativity as economic infrastructure — not a decorative afterthought.
Read the Full Article:
Sustaining a Heritage Industry | Harris Tweed Story
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