Almost agree with eveything here.

The biggest proviso would be that I wouldn't be relying on Abbot to turn things around.

While things may not get any worse if he were PM, I doubt they would get any better.

Unfortunately professional politicans motivation for power and to retain power tend to overide what is good for the common wealth of Australians.

I do like stevenimeyers thoughts about a sovereign wealth fund. I do agree with one of the critics ideas that (at least some of) the wealth should be invested in generating creating wealth (ie small business).

Thanks John for the piece, I'm sure you are right in your analysis.

I wonder if those with better economics than mine can come up with a way for citizens to invest in a solution to this kind of thing. This is well beyond my abilities.

Well done Jon,
Seems like we are going the same way as the United States where they exported all their industry to China and kept lawyers, coffee shops and hair dressers. They are headed for depression and we will too when China stops buying.

A govt fund to ensure the mining money does not raise the Australian dollar would help.

The long term of every Australian mine is to leave us Australians with a hole in the ground. Best make intelligent use of the wealth while we can. Tax the mines HARD!

Lets hope the day never comes “when Abbott gets into power”.
It was the Coalition under Howard (Abbott’s Messiah) who eagerly bought into the globalization scam and also signed the “free trade agreement” with the US.
A chip off the old Thatcher block.
It needs a new broom to sweep all the old corrupt agendas away.
I agree that the Gillard, Abbott, Brown trio are not the way to go and their respective parties are not going to change the status quo.
What is needed is a fresh look at the whole system.
First cab off the rank is to block the power of the corporations in pulling government strings, no matter what government.
Without that all bets are off.

'Putting all of our eggs in the mining basket has reduced the rest of our economy to a basket case.'

That's the problem in a nutshell.

Stevenmeyer, I agree with your previous suggested solution 'The Norwegian Cure'.

As to where we need to place our investment overseas. .. well our politicians have also already supplied the answer.

The current future fund is domiciled overseas for exactly the reasons you noted.

BUT there again the explicit purpose for that particular future fund is for the funding of our politicians and our bureaucrats superannuations.

I'd add a simple solution.

Put a GST on exported minerals and coal. No it's not a tax on industry it's a tax the consumer pays.

I reckon our major competitors would very quickly adopt such a tax.

The other benefit our major Australia manufacturing industries would have is that they'd automaticly have a natural price advantages over imports.
eg. Cheaper produced power, cheaper rare materials, very low comparative transport costs.

If other countries do the same to us ... well so bloody what... we'd have to return to producing for our own needs.