Yes we are on common ground SM we should start a thread I have ideas,.
Bazz sorry read all your thoughts here but not on board with the idea.
We started exporting to our only market Britain in sailing ships.
We opened our trade post frozen food and we grew.
Now evidence yet exists, that costs of transport from country's who pay so little will stop those country's exporting to us.
Remember,if you look honestly, Japan entered in to its war with us and the world, after its trade was threatened.
Look lets keep this thread rather than start another.
What are the answers to our not yet critical problems in manufacturing?
Are those problems all,new, or just the rising dollar.
I think the dollar is the biggest concern but the concerns we have have been evident for 30 years we can not compete with some prices in some areas.

So what do we do?
Lets look with honest eyes first, every government before Rudd from Hawk, believed in free trade, but supported selected industry's.
Labor put money in to car manufacturing and saw it wasted.;
Steel and clothing, do we still have a clothing industry? have found trouble a long time ago.
Are those screaming, from every side, aware of the BILLIONS lost by Blue scope?
Do we all understand the impacts of imposing restrictions on goods entering this country.
Would you,pay a 45% rise in the cost for your new home to use our country's steel? truly?
So what do we do, lets look at unemployment.
Hardly massive yet is it.
Are most aware Treasury and to some extent the bank fixing our interest rates like a figure about the current one?
Less, say 3% can lead to wage pressure.
If we look at new ways to support steel products/work we can save some of the industry.
These job losses are about that, an admission we can not export and compete with others.
But tax breaks and submissions to see our state and federal governments use our products IF they can be made near the prices.
Thoughts?

One of the factors that has never been considered by governments is
that employment has to cater for those that only want to go to work
in a factory and then go home at the end of the day.
They don't want to be a screen jockey, or salesman or servicemen and
will never have the ambition to rise to CEO of their employer.
However they must be catered for as they do contribute to society.

Belly, I know you don't believe what I am telling you, but it has already started.
Furniture and steel manufacture has returned to the US from China.
I was shopping for a lounge for my son recently and asked the salesman
if it was imported and his reply was no, we order from local makers.
He said they had almost no imported furniture.
Now that is a change to the way I remember it a few years ago.
Your comment on sailing ships is interesting but note that the
furniture industry was one of the first to be established in the colony.

Local manufacture will increase and the slow increase could be short
circuited by abandoning the WTO rules and reverting to temporary
tarrifs on imports.
It will not be easy but the transition is inevitable.

The financial problems in Europe and the US are a direct result of
the fall in GDP and the failure of OECD economies to increase growth.
Costs are rising with no increase in profits. All this is expected
and predicted as energy production is stagnant and energy costs are rising.