Yeah, Australia is going great.

We must lead by example, as Mirebella said today in regard to free trade, and we can rely on fast broadband in the future, as Leigh said the other day.

With leaders like that, we can all watch as Aust slowly erodes away given our agricultural sector is also in decline.

Oh, we have services and mining. What a joke.

The late Bert Kelly, a South Australian Federal MP championed free trade in the 1970s.
Few people realise how much excellent work initiated by the Chifley Government was undone by the efforts and consequences of Bert Kelly. Chifley, as WW2 was drawing to a close, knew that employment and security providing industries were essential for Australia. His government could see that manufacturing industries are essential for both purposes and as a consequence motor vehicle and home-ware industries were helped to get underway. Australia became virtually self sufficient in white goods (refrigerators and washing machines etc), the hardware for home and factory construction, fabrication and automobile and truck manufacture and assembly.

As a consequence, the demand for steel, bricks, cement, plasterboard, fasteners, and all sorts of products, expanded and generated full employment for returned service people and made sure that the pre-war depression did not return. The Modest Member wrote many articles for the AFR advocating that local production of shoes and clothing was not competitive and that it would be cheaper to reduce the tariffs, import those needs, and pay the displaced workers their wages to stay at home.

The problem with that argument is that in a country with a high standard of living, and an a propensity for income justice, any competition is impossible where the imports are produced either under slave wage conditions or where the overseas manufacturers enjoy the advantages of market scale and are prepared to adopt dumping or mechanist policies and many are. It should be obvious to everyone that without a vehicle, whitegoods and fabricating industry we will soon have no steel industry and our trade deficit will be even worse.

The government of this country has an obligation to see that essential industries continue in this country and I see the steel industry and its support customers as essential. I have noted that soon we will not be able to produce any part of the defence services' needs. We may soon have no oil refining industry. What a pity we privatised Commonwealth Oil Refineries.
(continued)

(Continuing from earlier comment)
Our mining industry has being expanded to the point where the market is, or soon will be, oversupplied and then the return on those exports will fall.

The Rudd and Gillard Governments attitude to that industry was correct in trying to obtain a reasonable return for the capital value of those resources. Their mistake was to aim to spend those assets on current consumption rather than to obtain ownership of overseas assets as replacements.

Norway has shown the way in that regard; they have used the value of their depleting oil reserves to establish a capital fund with a portfolio of shareholdings in productive companies outside of Norway.

We need to curtail further expansion of the mining industry, tax that industry to establish a Norway style fund, and recreate our manufacturing base with adequate protection where world's best practice is achievable

Total shocker which will have a knock on effect right through manufacturing. 1000s of people work in the automotive supply chain and they don't only make car parts. In SA the economy is so depressed and undiversified that if Holden's went down, it would take about one quarter of the states manufacturing sector with it. Suppliers need to get out now and hunt for overseas markets and retool their plants. Easier said than done.

I have to agree with Bob Katter on this one.

It makes no sense at all for government to give large grants to ford & Holden, to try to keep them manufacturing, & then go buy imported vehicles.

A huge part of Ford & Holden sales were federal, state & local government fleet purchases. Almost a half of all Commodores produced went to one level of government or another, before filtering down to the general public. Ford had similar numbers of Falcons move this way.

This made a large number of slightly used, very well serviced excellent cars available to the public, at prices they could afford.

This market is now filled with smaller imported hatches, much less car for the same money.

Government did not help, with misguided rules on towing, designed by poorly informed public servants, forcing many into large 4WDs to suit their horsing & boating interests.

Add the trend for women to move to large 4WD wagons because they feel safer in them, & the factors of a market collapse is in place.

Rather than handouts, a government return to purchasing locally built cars would be a much more practical solution.

We've ploughed billions into our car manufacturing industry.
And Foyle is quite correct, in his comments about previous Govt pro-manufacture policy, which introduced a period of unprecedented post war prosperity, that saw us become the third wealthiest nation on the planet, and a creditor one at that.
Then the dilettantish got into office, preferred services, which which they were slightly familiar?
As a policy for winding back union power, it was at least partially successful.
However, the unions also got into services, as massive industry superannuation fund managers.
We can sit on our hands and endlessly critique ford for not putting a diesel engine in the territory from day one, or not building the focus here, thereby sewing up a large export market, and economies of scale, that may well have seen them expanding production instead of planning to close, and take all the automation, we essentially paid for with them.
And this announcement coming just as the dollar starts to fall?
Or we can resume the property, and infrastructure at fair market prices, and set the thing up as an employee cooperative.
I'll guarantee an employee co-op, will be a lot more efficient and cost less to run.
After that, we need to build something the rest of the world will queue to buy!
For my money that something is a carbon bodied, electric car/station wagon/utility. Powered by A CNG consuming fuel cell.
This particular combination will allow the production of larger cars that more than compete for range, economy, torque and power with anything currently on the market!
Moreover, with far fewer moving parts, and electric, (in the wheel) propulsion, far less maintainence costs.
And carbon fibre, will be still doing duty, when all the other steel bodied conventional variants, are rusting in scrap yards!
Rhrosty.