The actual graph would be helpful!

Exactly! We need to completely rebuild a growing and flourishing manufacturing sector and indeed instal a Leader who actually understands that is along with innovation, where our true future prosperity lies!
Alan B.

Ross, you need to remove your tunnel vision glasses as it never ceases to amaze me how so many considered 'well educated' commentators fail to see the big picture with regards to mining employment.

There are literally dozens of multinational companies who perform the roll of 'project managers' and they in turn engage hundreds of large companies who actually perform the work and/or hire smaller companies or contractors to build the infrastructure that supports the mining industries.

There are the mechanics who service the thousands of vehicles, along with the electricians, plumbers and carpenters who also perform breakdown and routine maintenance on an ongoing basis.

So in actual fact, mining is a huge employer yet people like yourself often talk it down. And if you think manufacturing is going to fill the void, all I can say to you and anyone who thinks this, dream on, because we have made employing people so hard and so expensive that we have simply priced ourselves out of the market.

We now live in a society that pays people $250 per week to sit on their arse or an annualised salary of $40K a year to collect supermarket trollies.

What a joke we have become.

About our only hope is to tap into the huge CSG resource we have, to allow for affordable energy, yet this is bogged down by so much 'green tape' that nobody wants to go there. We now have major players either leaving the likes of SA, or at least contemplating the move because they cant afford the energy costs.

Its actually laughable!

Cheaper than coal thorium holds out much more hope than CSG and for far longer!

The only reason it isn't already powering Australia toward a new period of unprecedented prosperity!?

Is because of the sell our rocks to the world mentality, coupled to a bricks and mortar mindset! Further amplified by the I'm all right jack syndrome. Simply put, we can do so much better and without leaving anyone behind!
Alan B.

Alan, we have become reliant on the 'selling of our rocks to the world' simply because our hand out brigade is now so huge, we have no alternative but to do so. What should have been the icing on our cake, is now just the cake.

While I know little about what you talk about, thermo energy, is this something that we can export, or is it a 'use only' product?

If it is a use only, then great, lets do it then reduce the production costs of the likes of our rocks and CSG, so we can make plenty out of exporting them, because like it or not, well can never reclaim manufacturing to any extent whereby we export on a large scale to the world. It simply cant happen when we compare $30/hr to $5. Of cause the other hurdle is caused by the huge impost to production and efficiencies caused from the amount of issues that have to be considered from environmental, through to cultural heritage as they all add heavily to our lack of competitiveness.

But at least if we have affordable energy, our exporting costs will also be reduced.

Ross talks about social services, health care & education as being the largest & fastest growing "industries", & here I was thinking industries produced things.

So while it is true that these public funded activities keep people off the street, & provide them a good income, we should be very scared at what this means. These are not wealth generating industries, but wealth consuming activities. They can only exist if the wealth to pay for them is generated elsewhere.

With out the foreign exchange & wealth generated by the mining industry, agriculture & very few others, these consumers of wealth would have to be curtailed. Thus it is fair to see the mining industry to be seen as supporting these jobs, as without it, we could not afford them.

The car industry is not much of a loss, apart from as an import replacement activity. It required hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to support a few thousand over paid jobs. There lies future bankruptcy.

While we have politicians like Turnbull & Shorten who can only entice votes by buying them with handouts, the only way we will go is down. Articles like this, championing public sector as the only growth area should be a warning call, to all but the rent seekers.