*But once this God-given wealth is all fetched up we're going to have to compete in the real dog-eat-dog world*

Gawd Squeers, you mean that you city slickers might have to
find real jobs :)

People like me in WA, just about everything we produce, wheat, oats,
lamb, mutton, virtually the lot is exported. Now the protectionists
want us to pay extra on our inputs. That is exactly one of the
reasons why the poor old merino collapsed.

Now you are speculating about how long those minerals will last.
Well quite frankly, we would not have a clue and you are going to
have to do an awfull lot of drilling to find out. Its a huge
continent and much of it has never seen a drill hole.

Given that we can't predict the future very well a year ahead,
now you want to guess 50-100 years ahead. I bet you will be
totally wrong. How many people accurately predicted the future,
50 years ago?

We will never have competitive industries in Australia, if they
are protected from competition. They will simply suck the tariff
system dry as they did last time, making those efficient exporters
even less efficient. Its crazy!

A couple of days ago I ordered some stuff from the IKEA website.
It turned up this morning, up country, quite amazing. Unless
you people think that Australians are too stupid to compete with
the Swedes etc, then we'll need a stupidity tariff. Other wise
our businesses should be learning from the Swiss, Germans, Dutch,
etc, to see why they can do it and what we are doing wrong.

It starts with some proper training for our youth, so that they
actually have skills to their names

Dear Vanna,
thanks for the engagement, but I think I'm whistling in the wind on OLO, so I won't bore you or anyone else with a riposte.

Dear Yabby,
I bet you're a nice bloke, but you should open your mind.
For the record, I've done some of the hardest physical labour jobs there are, and never slept so well as when physically exhausted, or enjoyed life so much as when the body was put through its paces. I find sitting in a chair in front of a computer ten times harder.

And that's the cure for psychosomatic mental illness--discover your body, give it what it cries out for and your mind will join in.
Unfortunately, all you have for that is a treadmill.

"The aborigines were only invaded once."

Can we at least get history right? Australia was invaded a number of times, twice incorporating genocides.

Sometime during the Pleistocene, a negrito group made its way across the land bridge created by the most recent ice age.

With the Holocene came a progression of racial groups. The absence of Negrito DNA across most of Australia clearly demonstrates the Negritos were killed off. The Ice Age caused the oceans to rise and saved those Negritos thus sheltered on the new island of Tasmania.

A small enclave continued to exist in remote rainforest on the Atherton. Eventually the men were killed off and the women taken as wives by Queensland Aborigines. Any readers wanting to follow up on this can buy the recently published book Pygmonia, by Peter McAllister.

The British Empire brought the first white Australians here in chains, with muskets in their backs; which is not the classic uniform or equipment of genocidal invaders. Nevertheless, there were reprisal mass killings in several places in NSW, Queensland, and Western Australia.

The so-called Black Line of Tasmania is a fabrication(Read Keith Windschuttle).

The most recent invasion was in 1710, by Macassans of Indonesia, with up to 15,000 in good trepang fishing seasons.

Two Small Pox epidemics killed tens of thousands, and others died from Chicken Pox, Measles, Influenza, Pneumonia, and other European diseases. Yaws and leprosy was introduced by the Macassans and killed many more, or caused sterility. Malnutrition caused by selective western diet was a serious issue.

Perhaps now we can discuss protectionism versus free trade without these irritating non sequiturs being tossed in the debate.

And as to respondents deriding tariff restoration as mawkish muddling back to the past, in my last survey (August 2010) of a doorknock sample of an Australian demographic corridor, 86% supported such reform. I can promise those who so undemocratically imposed their minority ideological imposition, a very unpleasant future when we take our nation back.

Tariffs were a means to extract the wealth from the smaller states, & transfer it to NSW, & Vic, where most of the manufacturing was done.

It even discriminated against the country people of those states, in favour of the capital cities.

Not only did everyone pay 30 to 50% more for locally manufactured goods, giving factory workers, & owners a large boost in incomes, the tariffs collected on imports were spent in these cities as well. Import duties built Canberra, giving the bureaucrats a standard of living most could only dream of.

We may have to reintroduce tariffs to give meaningful employment at some stage. We can not go on for ever taking in each others washing, some of us will have to get productive again sometime. However there is another aspect that requires attention.

We will have to break the grip of the few companies who hold far too high a percentage of our retail trade. This domination is not permitted in the USA for example. There is a limit on the percentage of a market any one company can have in the US

For these companies, with huge turnover, it’s worth sourcing product off shore for just a few cents extra margin, & they are doing this aggressively. For smaller companies the gain is not worth the effort involved, so they are more likely to buy local.

It is sobering to remember that I once supplied raw materials to 6 companies in Sydney alone, who manufactured TV sets, & 10 who built refrigerators

Dear Tony Ryan,
first antisemitism:
<When the free trade cult won influence, enabled largely by the Zionist banker-driven WTO>

Then a spurious historical argument designed to disenfranchise an aboriginal population that has occupied the Australian landmass for many tens of thousands of years (in favour of a ravaging mob that's been here for a paltry 250. Though personally, I don't think any humans in the modern world should be entitled to exclusive ownership of their country's natural wealth, especially in a case such as Australia, with its massive reserves presided over by a relatively tiny population).

Now threats:
<I can promise those who so undemocratically imposed their minority ideological imposition, a very unpleasant future when we take our nation back.>

Does that entitle me to call you a fascist?

As for protectionism, here are some conventional pro/cons:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5106315_pros-cons-protectionism.html

I'm for ditching the capitalist model, period, but hypothetically, the weight of these views seem to back up what I said above.

Squeers

Let me respond:

"first antisemitism:"... Ethnic Jews are Judeans, Shepardi or Mizrahim; and their ancestors lived in greater Palestine. They, along with local Arabs, are the only Semites. Russian and European Jews have origins in Russia and Europe. They are Jewish by adoptive religion only and, as Mohandas Ghandi pointed out, this gives them no rights to another people's land. This leaves the Ashkenazim, whose origins are the 8th century Khazar Kingdom, whose king made everyone Jewish by instant decree. Hordes from the east drove them into East Europe and the Khazar language, mixed with German, resulted in the Yiddish we hear today. Again, they are not Semites.

The Zionist Jews, Askenazim Rothschild bankers in particular, are not Semites. If I criticise them, how does that make me anti-Semitic?

All this tells me is that you are very easily propagandised by Zionists.

"Then a spurious historical argument"... What part was spurious?

"Does that entitle me to call you a fascist?"... No. Fascism is an elitist minority forcing its views on the majority. We already have that in Australia. Surveys (available) demonstrate that around 90% of Australian Government policies are opposed by 80% of the people (ranging from 76% to 96%).

I am merely stating what history has taught us, that following a period of oppression by an obnoxious minority, the majority always let their former oppressors know how it feels.

I feel the majority are far too reasonable and forgiving.