When I am buying an item I don't give the country of manufacture a second thought. Why should I? Apart from a few unpleasant experiences with Chinese-made tools, I have no evidence to suggest that Australians make better shirts, plasticware, cars, computer equipment or stationery than anyone else, and pretty much everyone else makes them cheaper. Even -- or especially -- from a humanitarian point of view, isn't it much better to send $200 overseas to China where it can keep a family of four fed for a month than to send it to an Australian worker for a downpayment on her 48-inch colour television?

Purchasing goods from overseas is the most effective and practical way to ensure that a) Australians get value for money; b) Australian industries learn to focus on what they can do best and most efficiently; and c) people overseas can attain the kind of lifestyle that we want human beings to have.

Australian made goods are more often than not, good to excellent in quality and can compete for market share if our firms have the capacity to export. The biggest problem with Australian goods and goods made in high cost countries is their higher cost relative to low cost countries which enjoy huge support from their home governments.

To compete in this difficult environment, high cost countries have to differentiate their products through design, branding, intellectual property, new distribution channels and value for money pricing.

Australian and global consumers will gladly buy Australian products which meet their needs.

The problem is that we have all been conditioned by mass retailers like Bunnings to go for the lowest price and forget the quality and the environmental impact. We can not have it both ways. Quality costs money and if we want quality we should be prepared to pay for it. The automation of manufacturing is seeing the Japanese bringing back their manufacturing plants from China because modern manufacturing needs highly skilled workers.

Disagree with author. Aus goods that i require are good quality compared to Chinese rubbish. I am talking tools and hardware mainly.

Aus grocery items are getting harder to find because supermarkets import so much, this affects Aus producers. If you see how fish are farmed in Asia you would not buy any seafood other than Aus.

Agree with Banjo. Our high speed drills and those produced in NZ, i.e, are vastly superior than those currently imported from either China or Taiwan.
Australian made however, are supporting too many hangers on or profit demanding parasites?
Without them, we could more than compete with fully imported products with transport/carbon producing components, that see them shipped halfway round the world?
Take car manufacture as a case in point.
We make components all over the place and even fully import some components?
Each one of these separate manufacturing facilities has to make an individual profit component and pay a tax component!
All of which cascade into and lift the final price paid by the consumer.
Similarly, much of our finished production is transferred to warehouses, where a profit component, up to 100% or more is added, before it is transferred to retail facilities, which then add their often similar profit margins and premiums. The price of a loaf of bread is negatively impacted by, over 40 taxes and many profit takers!
[Seed merchants, harvest contractors, fuel merchants, transport operators, flour millers, salt merchants, baking powder or yeast manufacturers, electricity suppliers, more transport operators, bakers, bankers, more transport operators, service stations, retailers etc.]
It's a marketing model that only ever made sense, when all our goods where transported by horse and cart, primitive and relatively rare rail-roads and paddle wheelers?
The NBN roll out, will create many opportunities for direct from factory to us, consumerism models. More than halving retail costs, all while doubling profit outcomes.
[What we see happening, when a farmer creates his own retail outlets?]
Other more rational approaches will see much of our scattered manufacture, do a Fiat, and produce all the component parts on a single lot; via, a single manufacturer and logically, as close as possible to the lowest cost energy supplier?
Rhrosty.

seriously?! Australian products are of worse quality? - I have always found Australian products to be of much better quality - expense being where we are unable to compete