Australia once had a substantial textile, clothing and footwear manufacturing sector. Decades of offshoring, driven by cost pressures and the absence of policy frameworks that valued local production, reduced that sector to a fraction of its former scale. What remains is a community of manufacturers; ethical, skilled, often small, operating without the measurement infrastructure that would make their capability visible to the institutions that could direct work their way.
Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Paralympics has reopened that conversation. The campaign launched by Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA) to have Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic uniforms manufactured locally is a welcome one. A YouGov poll conducted in support of the campaign found that 82 per cent of Australians believe Olympic uniforms should be made in Australia (ECA, 2026). The Australian Fashion Council (AFC) is preparing a National Manufacturing Strategy, developed through 14 national consultation sessions and scheduled for release this month. Political and public appetite, it seems, is not the problem.
The problem, it seems, is that we do not yet have the measurement infrastructure to match that appetite; one that would make Australian manufacturing capability legible, comparable, and verifiable in ways that procurement decisions can actually rely on.
This is an issue I have spent the last 18 months researching. Next week, at the UTS Research Symposium: Opening up the Fashion Archive, I will be presenting work on Digital Product Passports as participatory fashion archives — my first academic presentation in a number of years. That research sits alongside the commercial question I have been working on through the Adelaide University Venture Catalyst program: the development of the FM Circular Fashion IQ Index, a five-pillar assessment framework designed to help Australian textile brands document and demonstrate their circular capability to procurement partners, policymakers, and consumers.
The Disclosure Gap
The starting point for the research into assessment was a question that turns out to be deceptively simple: what does the current transparency landscape actually make visible about Australian manufacturing capability, and what does it leave out? The answer, it turned out, was that it leaves out quite a lot.
The Ragtrader coverage of ECA's campaign (Kelly, 2026) includes supply chain disclosures from several of the brands involved in Paris 2024 uniform production. What is instructive about those disclosures is not what they reveal but what they cannot. Modern slavery statements (the primary vehicle for supply chain transparency in Australian fashion) were designed to identify and mitigate exploitation risk. They were not designed to map manufacturing capability, demonstrate circular practice, or support the kind of comparative assessment that a procurement process requires.
This is a structural limitation and not a criticism of individual brands. As Laudal (2010) notes in his analysis of supply chain transparency, disclosure frameworks shape what becomes visible, and the Australian modern slavery regime shapes visibility around risk identification rather than capability demonstration. The result is a landscape in which buyers who want to source locally, including government procurement agencies with genuine intent, have limited tools for doing so systematically.
The AFC's own research finds that 97 per cent of clothes sold in Australia are currently made overseas (AFC, 2024). Reversing that trajectory, even partially, requires a shared methodology for identifying, verifying, and comparing what Australian manufacturers can actually do.
Who Is Already Doing This Work
It is worth being clear about what is already operating in this space because the capability exists, even if the measurement infrastructure to make it visible does not.
The Social Outfit, a social enterprise based in Marrickville, Sydney, employs refugee and migrant women in garment manufacturing and has signed on as a Support Partner of ECA's Olympic and Paralympic Uniform Campaign. Their rationale is direct: uniform procurement provides essential revenue, skill development, scale-up opportunities, and paid work for their sewing team (The Social Outfit, 2026). Their facility recently hosted a visit from the AFC Parliamentary Friendship Group, including Sally Sitou, Member for Reid, and Thanh Quach, Chief of Staff to Dai Le MP, Member for Fowler, signalling that parliamentary engagement with the manufacturing revival agenda is moving beyond rhetoric.
This matters. The Social Outfit represents the kind of manufacturer that a procurement framework should be able to identify, verify, and direct work toward, that is; a business that is local, ethical, traceable, and already operating at the intersection of social and circular economy values. The challenge is not that these businesses do not exist, rather, that there is no standardised framework for making their capability legible to procurement partners at scale.
The Brisbane context makes this gap particularly visible. In August 2025, Fashion Queensland and Ethical Clothing Australia co-hosted an industry event in Brisbane that brought together accredited businesses, emerging designers, manufacturers, and TCF Union representatives to discuss the state of local manufacturing. ECA's National Manager Rachel Reilly was direct about where things stand: "We're stagnant right now in terms of capability and skills" (Reilly, cited in Churchill, 2025). That is a candid assessment from inside the campaign itself. Reilly also noted that Queensland's state government already holds a procurement policy that preferences local manufacturers — but that sustained advocacy is still required to ensure government actually activates that buying power (Churchill, 2025). The policy lever exists. The capability exists. What is missing is the measurement infrastructure that connects them reliably.
The policy lever exists. The capability exists. What is missing is the measurement infrastructure that connects them reliably.
The ECA campaign rightly highlights that Australia has genuine manufacturing capability including businesses such as ABMT in Melbourne, Waverley Mills in Tasmania, Silver Fleece in Adelaide, Buckle with over a century of local manufacturing experience, and social enterprises like The Social Outfit embedding workforce inclusion into the production model (Kelly, 2026; The Social Outfit, 2026). The challenge is that this capability currently exists as sector knowledge rather than structured, verifiable data. Knowing that these manufacturers exist is not the same as being able to demonstrate what they can produce, at what volume, to what standard, and with what traceability evidence - all of which is what a serious procurement process requires.
What the FM Index Measures — and Why Pillar 3 Matters Here
Over the last 18 months I have been tracking the EU policies and regulations that will radically transform transparency requirements in the fashion sector (including the introduction of Digital Product Passports) and developing a measurement architecture that assesses brands across five pillars aligned with that emerging regulatory direction:
- Pillar 1: Circular Design Integration examines the degree to which circularity is embedded at the design stage, including material selection logic, modularity, and end-of-life intent;
- Pillar 2: Material Circularity & Sourcing addresses verified provenance, recycled content thresholds, and the traceability of fibre inputs through the supply chain;
- Pillar 3: Manufacturing Capability & Traceability covers the documented capability of production partners, the depth of traceability evidence from cut-make-trim through to finished product and the verification status of manufacturing relationships;
- Pillar 4: End-of-Life Infrastructure assesses whether brands have operational systems — not aspirations — for take-back, repair, resale, or fibre recovery;
- Pillar 5: Governance & Transparency examines the policies, accountability structures, and disclosure practices that make the other four pillars legible and verifiable over time.
In the context of the Brisbane 2032 conversation, Pillar 3 is the most directly relevant. This is consistent with the broader literature: Seuring and Müller (2008) identify manufacturing transparency as foundational to sustainable supply chain management, noting that downstream sustainability commitments cannot be reliably demonstrated without upstream production data. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation similarly identifies production-stage traceability as a prerequisite for circular economy claims (EMF, 2017).
Defining "locally made"
One of the methodological decisions in developing the FM Index has been to build a tiered evidence system that distinguishes between self-declared capability, documented capability and independently verified capability. This distinction draws on principles from third-party assurance frameworks in environmental reporting (Gray, 2006) and reflects emerging practice in Digital Product Passport design under the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which will apply to textiles from 2027 (European Commission, 2022).
The tiering matters because it changes what "locally made" can mean in practice.
A brand that can say it manufactures in Australia is not equivalent, in evidentiary terms, to a brand that can produce chain of custody documentation, current supplier certification records, and a third-party verified production trail. A procurement framework that cannot distinguish between those two positions cannot direct sourcing decisions effectively; which means the policy intent behind the Brisbane 2032 campaign, and the AFC's National Manufacturing Strategy, risks outpacing the infrastructure needed to implement it.
This is no longer a hypothetical concern. In Australia, the Queensland Procurement Policy 2026 now requires suppliers to quantify and evidence local, social and environmental benefits in tender responses, with evaluation criteria carrying a 10–20% weighting for significant procurements (Queensland Government, 2026). For TCF manufacturers seeking to compete for Brisbane 2032 contracts, self-declaration is no longer sufficient. Documented, verifiable capability is what the policy now demands; which makes the absence of a standardised manufacturing capability assessment framework not just an efficiency gap but an active barrier to policy implementation.
Connecting Assessment to Archive
The research I will be presenting at UTS next week approaches this challenge from a complementary direction. Digital Product Passports, in their most ambitious form, are more than simply compliance tools, they are participatory archives of making: repositories of the decisions relationships, and material flows that constitute a garment's production history (Cagnin et al., 2021). The FM Index's Pillar 3 assessment is, in effect, a structured method for generating the kind of production-stage data that a meaningful DPP would need to carry.
This alignment is intentional. The assessment framework and the archive infrastructure are designed to develop in parallel, so that brands working through the Index are simultaneously building the documentation practices that will position them for DPP integration as regulatory requirements mature. In doing so, they are also generating the verifiable provenance record that gives "Australian made" its evidentiary weight, which is precisely what the Brisbane 2032 procurement window will require of any manufacturer serious about competing for it.
What This Means for the Brisbane 2032 Conversation
The ECA campaign, The Social Outfit's public commitment, the AFC's National Manufacturing Strategy, and the parliamentary engagement now visible around this issue all point in the same direction: there is genuine political and community will to rebuild local, ethical, circular manufacturing capability. Brisbane 2032 is the catalyst. The question is whether the sector can build the measurement infrastructure to match that will before the procurement windows open.
The FM Circular Fashion IQ Index is one contribution to that infrastructure. Pillar 3 in particular is designed to help brands build the documented, evidence-based picture of their manufacturing relationships that procurement partners actually need and that Australian manufacturing, at its best, genuinely deserves.
Brisbane 2032 is a long-run opportunity. The measurement infrastructure to support it needs to be built now.
Add Your Voice
ECA's Olympic and Paralympic Uniform Campaign is open for support. Sign the petition to champion local and ethical manufacturing for Brisbane 2032: https://lnkd.in/gQKd_KVK
Dr Angelina Russo is the founder of Fleurieu Made, an Australian circular fashion label, and the developer of the FM Circular Fashion IQ Index — a measurement architecture designed to make circular manufacturing capability legible to procurement partners and policymakers. She is the Green Industries SA 2024–25 Women in Circular Economy Leadership Fellow and a 2025 Adelaide University Venture Catalyst graduate. Contact angelina@fleurieumade.com
References
Australian Fashion Council (AFC). (2024). State of Australian Fashion Industry Report. Australian Fashion Council.
Cagnin, C., Könnölä, T., & Amanatidou, E. (2021). Digital product passports for a circular economy: Governance and technical design considerations. Journal of Cleaner Production, 315, 128240.
Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA). (2026, February 26). Campaign: Australian made uniforms for Brisbane 2032. Ethical Clothing Australia. https://www.ethicalclothingaustralia.org.au
Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF). (2017). A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion's future. Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
European Commission. (2022). Proposal for a regulation establishing a framework for setting ecodesign requirements for sustainable products (COM/2022/142 final). European Commission.
Gray, R. (2006). Social, environmental and sustainability reporting and organisational value creation? Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 19(6), 793–819.
Kelly, C. (2026, February 26). Industry calls for Brisbane 2032 uniforms to be Australian made. Ragtrader. https://www.ragtrader.com.au
Laudal, T. (2010). An attempt to determine the CSR potential of the international clothing business. Journal of Business Ethics, 96(1), 63–77.
NSW Government. (2023). NSW Fashion and Clothing Smart Factory Strategy. NSW Department of Regional NSW.
Queensland Government. (2026). Queensland Procurement Policy 2026. Department of Housing and Public Works. https://www.housing.qld.gov.au/news-publications/policies/queensland-procurement-policy
Seuring, S., & Müller, M. (2008). From a literature review to a conceptual framework for sustainable supply chain management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16(15), 1699–1710.
The Social Outfit. (2026, March). Olympic and Paralympic Uniform Campaign partnership [LinkedIn post]. https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-social-outfit
Churchill, L. (2025, August 1). An industry evening with Ethical Clothing Australia. Fashion Queensland. https://fashionqueensland.com.au/blog/an-industry-evening-with-ethical-clothing-australia