Supply chain resilience: Australia needs a strategy if it’s serious about easing cost of living pressures

Professor Vinh Thai, Accounting, Info Systems and Supply Chain (0415 659 282 or vinh.thai@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: cost of living, supply chain resilience, transport  

"Australians are struggling with the rapidly rising costs of essential items such as food, fuel and transport and it’s predicted the situation is not going to be improved any time soon.

"One of the factors contributing to the rising cost of living in Australia is global supply chain disruptions where reduced sailings, shortage of empty containers and port congestions have significantly added costs to the supply chain, indirectly increasing costs of food and other commodities.

"This is not expected to improve any time soon, given the uncertainty of the ongoing war in Ukraine, skills shortage, congestion in some world’s major ports, and unpredictable geopolitical events such as the conflict between China and Taiwan.

"Businesses need to build up and enhance their supply chain resilience capability to ensure the costs of transporting essential items aren’t being passed onto Australians. Their supply chains should be able to efficiently predict, respond and recover from disruptions.

"While the Australian Government continues to implement the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative with Japan and India (which promotes best practices, investment promotion and buyer-seller matching events for supply chain diversification) more needs to be done, such as developing a national supply chain resilience strategy.  

"The government can further support this by introducing policies which support the development of the national supply chain capability through building key infrastructure (including digital) in logistics, especially maritime logistics, given the maritime dependency of Australian trade.  

"On a global scale, governments need to be working together to provide incentives for cross-border supply chain collaboration, especially in the South East Asia region and take a more proactive role in logistics and supply chain manpower development."

Professor Vinh Thai is a logistics and supply chain expert in the School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain of RMIT University. He is also the founder of the Australian Maritime Logistics Research Network (AMLRN).

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