Rechub: China is or was recently experiencing 30% wages inflation, and the cheapest energy they produce is via their huge hydro and a energy losing (up to 64%) grid and distribution system!

Not that long ago a factory there laid off 5,000 workers in favor of automation. Given we can produce cheaper energy and we can thanks to cheaper than coal, thorium! We can more than compete with any other automated production anywhere!

Doable given our reserves (Thousands of years if kept here and for ourselves) of thorium and rolling it out as very local supply to produce power for just 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour, connected to and alongside specific projects, will enable us to undercut anyone whose energy supply paradigm is dearer! (The rest of the world!)

Take vehicle manufacture? Rationalising it would ensure all production took place on a single site and by just the one company and if rolled out as a co-op, utilizing the most efficient lowest costing manufacturing model, which would also actually prevent multiple tax liabilities being a cascading paradigm in local vehicle manufacture! And just one of thousands of possibilities!

And rolled out as a government sponsored co-ops because that's proven as the most cost effective manufacturing, private enterprise, free market model in the world! Everybody on the factory floor has a vested interest as working shareholders in the success and shares in any downturn or loss; and all the reason they need to flush out and remove the drones and bottlenecks!

Then we can if we so chose add the least costly tax system even as we increase the actual revenue we collect, giving the high tech energy dependant manufacturers the world over every reason to relocate here? And indeed the cashed up self funded retirees of most of western Europe!?

It can be done but won't because very powerful vested local interest and (self serving) political idealogues actively prevent it!?

Given the actual political will? It's too easy!
Alan B.

Alan B, energy is only one component of running a business, the expenses in my business are wages, energy costs then rent.

So if my power bill was even reduced to just 1/4, I would only save about $110 per week, or less than a half a days wages for a tradesman.

Even free energy will not place into a position to compete and as for automation of our industries, how do we feed our increasing unemployed?

We are very unique here in Oz, as we are a huge country, rich with resources and enjoy a great standard of living, but given we have such a tiny population, with huge appetites for lifestyles, exporting is our only option and mining is the only real answer for jobs and revenues. Anything else is purely dreaming.

Labor thought it was real, so spending it several times over