All well and good Chris. And too hard an ask given the absolute paucity of future vision and the missing, complete bipartisan focus on the national good!?

Sadly we are vastly overburdened with an overflowing full measure of idea destroying, patently visionless, blame shifting, soulless, gormless, idealogues on both sides of the isle; that put themselves and their petty little self interests first, then the party and winning and holding power for the next three years as an almost inconvenient adjunct?

And prepared to promise the moon or turn white into black if that is what'll do it!?
Rhrosty.

All of what Rhrosty said and more so, Australia is a very different place if you don't live in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane.

If you live in the country in Australia ie you know those agriculture jobs the author talks about, you die younger, you have higher cost of living (if you exclude housing), your kids have less opportunities and worst education outcomes and you earn less then city folk, and if you loss your job and have to move your house isn't worth anything.

Apart for those issue it's just great.

who said anything about we are going great.

I am actually suggesting a need for some pain, and a need to make ourselves more competitive and productive to generate jobs across the board, including manufacturing.

In a world where trade barriers have been reduced, you have no choice but to compete.

As for rural living, I chose to live there as well. I also find it difficult to get work, but you must always try and compete as best as you can.

Granted, living in Albury Wodonga is hardly a small town.

Of course the nation is slowly dying, and I have no reason to believe things will get better.

In a situation like this people stop thinking about how we can pay off debt and a become a strong nation again, because there is little hope that it can actually happen.
They accept the nation has had it and move to a self interest position and take everything they can get on the way down without guilt.

This is where you idiot economists think is all under control but don't have a clue.
This is where your destruction on nationalism and your free trade instead of fair trade and downplaying debt by instead referring to it as % of GDP gets you.
We stop caring about our debt and we blame you the stupid economists and politicians.

You think you have it all under wraps playing with your numbers but at some point the Australian people say stuff you and stuff your numbers, and we don't care anymore.

This is where they all jump over to the welfare class and suck the country dry.
Why should we try if its all going to end up in foreign hands anyway, and your great economic vision has resulted in the slow death of the country.

Australia is declining economically because our govts loyalties lie elsewhere besides Australia. Why do I say this?

Transfer of industry out of Australia is a manifestation of the Lima Declaration achieving its objectives.

They allow the Chinese to OWN our farm land instead of only Leasing it to them like pastoral stations have been for the last 150 years.

Don't give me any of that crap about the land aint going anywhere either because all that does is prove my case that they should have only ever been given leases and besides, with ownership comes influence, don't you realise that?

What you do think happened in Europe 2-300 hundred years ago when the super rich brought up vasts tracts of land? They become the elite.

and they have signed the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Dont give any of that