Shadow Minister,

Letting "jobs fade away to other countries" is a matter of deliberate government policy. Our government could impose tariffs to compensate for lower labour costs, lower safety and environmental standards, etc., so that it takes away the profits from labour arbitrage. There is no reason why our standards should be equalized with the most overpopulated, most mismanaged countries on Earth. The only dysfunctional culture that you have any hope of changing is your own. It is worth mentioning that the American people shut down the first era of gobalisation after World War One. As Prof. Peter Turchin writes:

http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/peter-turchin-wealth-poverty/

"Put simply, it is fear of revolution that restores equality. And my analysis of US history in a forthcoming book suggests that this is precisely what happened in the US around 1920.

"Reforms that ensured an equitable distribution of the fruits of economic growth turned out to be a highly effective counter to the lure of Bolshevism.

"These were the years of extreme insecurity. There were race riots (the ‘Red Summer of 1919’), worker insurrections, and an Italian anarchist terrorist campaign aimed directly at the elites. The worst incident in US labour history was the West Virginia Mine War of 1920—21, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain. Although it started as a workers’ dispute, the Mine War eventually turned into the largest armed insurrection that the US has ever seen, the Civil War excepted. Between 10,000 and 15,000 miners armed with rifles battled against thousands of strikebreakers and sheriff deputies. The federal government eventually called in the Air Force, the only time it has ever done so against its own people. Add to all this the rise of the Soviet Union and the wave of socialist revolutions that swept Europe after the First World War, triggering the Red Scare of 1921, and you get a sense of the atmosphere. Quantitative data indicate that this period was the most violent in US history, second only to the Civil War. It was much, much worse than the 1960s.

(cont'd)

(cont'd)

"The US, in short, was in a revolutionary situation, and many among the political and business elites realised it. They began to push through a remarkable series of reforms. In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed legislation that effectively shut down immigration into the US. Although much of the motivation behind these laws was to exclude ‘dangerous aliens’ such as Italian anarchists and Eastern European socialists, the broader effect was to reduce the labour surplus. Worker wages grew rapidly. At around the same time, federal income tax came in and the rate at which top incomes were taxed began to increase. Somewhat later, provoked by the Great Depression, other laws legalised collective bargaining through unions, introduced a minimum wage, and established Social Security.

"The US elites entered into an unwritten compact with the working classes. This implicit contract included the promise that the fruits of economic growth would be distributed more equitably among both workers and owners. In return, the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged (no revolution)."

#Letting jobs fade away to other countries" is a matter of deliberate government policy.# (Divergence)

...Yes, and it is also cowardly. Australians have a not so illustrious history of protecting jobs and conditions threatened by Chinese. What better way to neuter worker opposition to foreign take-over, than to migrate industry off-shore. Much safer it is to allow the working class to serve Chinese masters in the services industry at home.

...The fears our forefathers expressed at the time of Federation, and which prompted the white Australia policy, may yet eventuate: That of a Chinese “Fifth Column” here in Australia. They had foresight, uncommon among the current elites in Canberra.

Divergence,

Raising tariffs is proven way to destroy jobs. Saving jobs is by reducing input costs by making labour more efficient and flexible, reducing energy costs and reducing unnecessary regulation compliance costs.

Labor increased the costs of all of the above, and oversaw the collapse of the motor industry, the steel industry and the aluminium smelting industry.

The simple and obvious key to maximise profits is to have the largest possible number of wealthy consumers and at the same time, the poorest possible producers. This is clearly difficult within a single country, where the producers are also the consumers.
Globalisation however, creates a very simple -short term- solution.
Short term because a country that produces nothing won't stay wealthy for long. Witness the meteoric rise of those historically cheap and nasty imported goods sources; 'Made in Japan' /Hong Kong /Singapore /Taiwan...
We've only managed to dodge this bullet by 'selling off the farm' -and all the resources under it.
Thanks to the short term planning of short sighted governments, we have become a heavily dependent nation.
And Dependence is Slavery.

Shadow Minister,

You then need to explain why we have such high unemployment and underemployment now (10.6% and 9.5%, respectively, for June 2014, according to Roy Morgan Research). You also need to explain why wages went up, not down, in the US after the end of the first era of globalisation. These graphs from State of Working America show the unemployment rate, and productivity and average wages in the US from 1948 to the present.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-jobs-figure-5g-unemployment-rate-1948/

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4u-change-total-economy/

The beginning of the present era of globalisation from the point of view of US workers can probably be dated to the Immigration Act of 1965, which greatly expanded immigration, and the Tokyo Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which started in 1973. You can see that wages of nonsupervisory workers stagnated as globalisation got going, no longer keeping up with growth in productivity, while unemployment has remained just as bad and sometimes worse. On the other hand, globalisation has been great for the top 1% of the population.

http://lanekenworthy.net/2010/07/20/the-best-inequality-graph-updated/

You are correct, however, that industries can get too cosseted. There needs to be good oversight as to whether differences in costs are due to labour arbitrage or not keeping up with the latest technology. In the latter case, more competition may be indicated. The problem is always regulatory capture.

I agree with Grim about the long-term dangers of dependence.