We can actually determine which industries will flourish simply by doing the patriotic and right thing and reintroduce protectionism.
Production of iron, steel and aluminium locally- a cinch if you have a captive market by preventing any imports of those resources; and reducing motor vehicles fom overseas and giving preference to an whole new Australian motor vehicle industry.
It is easy to work out demand and act accordingly.
ONESTEEL and other Australian companies could employ more workers without worrying about metals coming in from Asia.
Time that we tell Kevin 07 and M Turnbull & co that they need to wakeup and realise that protectionism is very good when done in key industries to the extent necessary to restore full employment, for strategic and national reasons and to reduce our foreign debt. Great multiplier effect here with metals and motor vehicle production.
Only import for other things once we sort out how many industries require a green light against imports.

Possibly the worst place in Australia to develop blueprints for export industries would be a university. The education system is one of the worst culprits for imports.

The education department in one state imported 40,000 laptop computers for its teachers, and then it installed imported software only onto those laptops. Although the laptops were paid for by the public, no hardware or software came from Australia. This is typical of the education system for primary and high schools, but there is almost nothing in a University that is made in Australia also.

When the teachers have no interest in anything made in Australia, then the students gradually become the same also, and eventually there is no desire for locally made products, or even a desire to produce locally made products.

There has to be a change in the attitude of the public. At present it is completely acceptable or even fashionable to buy imported products. This does nothing for Australia in the longer term, as we will gradually lose the ability to produce anything

Webby, we trade because it makes us better off. We export things we produce competitively - ore, some metals, agricultural produce, tourism, education - and buy things we don't - small cars, electronics, clothing and footwear, etc, etc. Protectionism means making things we aren't good at; prices are higher, quality lower, living standards fall. Some years ago the cost of protecting too many, too small car producers was that on avaerage cars cost more than $4000 more than without protection, and Australian-built cars were consistently at the bottom of reliability surveys. The high price of cars was built into the price of every product and service whose manufacturers used cars, making them less competitive. Under protection, the firms which can compete are taxed to shelter those who can't. Madness, in my view.

We should do what we do well, i.e. can be world conmpetitive in, and not prop up industries which can't compete. That gives us higher living standards and employment, better and more varied products, and better things to spend taxes on.

We can actually determine which industries will flourish simply by doing the patriotic and right thing and reintroduce protectionism.
Production of iron, steel and aluminium locally- a cinch if you have a captive market by preventing any imports of those resources; and reducing motor vehicles for overseas and giving preference to an whole new Australian motor vehicle industry.
It is easy to work out demand and act accordingly.
ONESTEEL and other Australian companies could employ more workers without worrying about metals coming in from Asia.
Time that we tell Kevin 07 and M Turnbull & co that they need to wakeup and realise that protectionism is very good when done in key industries to the extent necessary to restore full employment, for strategic and national reasons and to reduce our foreign debt. Great multiplier effect here with metals and motor vehicle production.
Only import for other things once we sort out how many industries require a green light against imports.
Too much emphasis on wealth creation is really just a poor excuse for greed justification and the discredited trickle down effect emenating from Sydney's North Shore and Melbourne's Kew. And I am bored with it.

Leon - I was sufficinetly intriged by your claim that manufacturing was Victoria's biggest employing sector to look up a few stats. Here are the Aus stats. the first figure is number, the second percentage.
ANNUAL AVERAGE 2008
`000 %
Agriculture, forestry and fishing 354.6 3.3
Mining 163.2 1.5
Manufacturing 1 049.1 9.8
Electricity, gas, water and waste services 122.9 1.1
Construction 986.5 9.2
Wholesale trade 404.5 3.8
Retail trade 1 216.0 11.3
Accommodation and food service 709.2 6.6
Transport, postal and warehousing 566.4 5.3
Information media and telecommunications 223.6 2.1
Financial and insurance services 402.4 3.7
Rental, hiring and real estate services 203.2 1.9
Professional, scientific and technical services 792.2 7.4
Administrative and support services 341.5 3.2
Public administration and safety 644.2 6.0
Education and training 808.3 7.5
Health care and social assistance 1 109.0 10.3
Arts and recreation services 187.5 1.7
Other services 456.1 4.2

And I was surprised to find that manufacturing was still important - not as important as you claim but important. Its share of the employment pie has been declining for decades. Can we do anything about manufacturing? One of the major lessons Australian governments have learnt in recent years that any serious attempt to help specific sectors in the economy simply backfires. The high tariff barriers of past years did nothing more than protect profits, and some jobs, plus a lot of antiquainted equipment and bad management practices. We were all better off when they went. Attempts to pick winners also proved a waste of time. Your centre has its uses but maybe we should give industry policy a rest. The reason manufacturing has been hard hit is that there is a global financial crisis on..

I do still wonder about manufacturing in Oz..
I’ve done a bit myself in the past.
I’ve been thanked for doing that by being bastardized by government in every way past imagination.

Manufacturing isn’t difficult.
It takes little more than husbanding resources and performing the task.

What scares most off from making product is the total refusal of banks to finance projects and the total refusal of ‘governance’ to abide by their own rules of engagement purportedly supporting OzIndustry in its vain attempts to get the job done.
I mean by this – going to one’s own bank with an ‘Official Purchase Order’ from the Commonwealth and being told to go away by that bank.
Excuse being that the ‘customer’ (being the C of A) might not honour the agreement or pay for the product once manufactured.
Now how compromised could that be?

The bottom line is – stuff this country.
Why keep pretending that individuals of imagination should keep bashing their brains out against the brick wall of stupidity; the dolts entrenched within ‘governance’ and their network pals within the ‘professional guilds’.
This place still operates on the same rules insinuated by the Rum Corps.

To summarise –
“How do you make a small fortune manufacturing in Australia?
Easy. Start with a humungous fortune and watch it wither away!”