SPEE3D co-founder authors new ASPI report on Australian industrial sovereignty

Steven Camilleri, co-founder and chief technology officer of Australian metal manufacturer SPEE3D, has authored a new report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that sets out a framework for deciding which goods and capabilities Australia must be able to produce, repair or regenerate domestically. 

The report, Make stuff here … or else: A framework for deciding what Australia must produce, repair or regenerate domestically, argues that national resilience is not an abstract policy ambition but a measurable engineering problem. It is a follow-up to Camilleri's 2025 Make Stuff Here blueprint. 

Sovereignty, the report stresses, is simply a nation's ability to make choices about how it works. At its centre is a concept the report calls the Sovereignty Countdown: the time a critical system can keep operating if external supply is cut, drawing only on the reserves, substitutes and domestic capability already in hand. Every essential function, water, fuel, food logistics, power and communications, has one, the report argues, yet most operators have never measured it. 

The report illustrates the idea with publicly visible dependencies. The chemicals that keep urban drinking water safe are often held in weeks of supply, sometimes as little as a fortnight; national diesel cover is usually discussed in weeks rather than strategic depth; and a disruption to imported fertiliser at planting time may not be felt until a harvest fails months later. Each, it argues, is a countdown that can be measured, managed and extended. 

Camilleri argues that Australia faces a dangerous lag. Policy has shifted decisively toward resilience and sovereign capability, but physical industrial capacity cannot be rebuilt as quickly as legislation can be passed. 

"Australia's essential systems all run on a clock most of their operators have never started," Camilleri said. "The Sovereignty Countdown simply asks how long each system could keep going if supply stopped tomorrow. Once you can measure that, resilience stops being a slogan and becomes an engineering problem you can actually solve." 

The report is explicit that this is not a case for self-sufficiency or blanket protection. It calls instead for a disciplined, narrow set of capabilities to be rebuilt where the time to restore supply under pressure exceeds the buffers the country holds, while trusted international partnerships remain central. 

"This isn't about recreating the smokestack economy, or making everything here," Camilleri said. "It's about identifying the narrow set of capabilities we can't afford to lose and rebuilding them on better terms. It's about using the distributed, digital and advanced manufacturing methods suited to a large continent with a limited industrial workforce." 

The report's recommendations include a national resilience test for critical-infrastructure operators, a minimum national survival threshold below which essential systems should not be allowed to operate, and financing mechanisms, including a continuity investment window and a role for superannuation capital, to make resilience investable rather than reliant on permanent subsidy. 

About SPEE3D 

SPEE3D is an Australian advanced manufacturing company specialising in high-speed metal 3D printing. Its supersonic deposition technology delivers manufacturing-grade metal printing at production speeds, supporting defence, industrial and remote-area applications. www.spee3d.com 

Media contact 

Aerin Roberts, Head of Marketing 
aerinroberts@spee3d.com 
+61 (03) 8759 1464 

Note to editors: Make stuff here … or else is published by ASPI. The opinions and recommendations in the report are the author's and do not represent the formal position of SPEE3D or ASPI. The report is available at https://www.aspi.org.au/report/make-stuff-here-or-else/