It is all about profits.
Why make anything when you can improve your profits by importing.
How loyal are you when it comes to the choice between an import and buying locally and, if you had your own business would you consider making something in Oz or make massive profits by having some cheap overseas option make it for you?
We are now part of the global economy and there will never be a pollie brave enough to change that nor will there be a government in the foreseeable future that can afford the subsidies required too bring industry home again.
Our only solution is to compete and that means cheaper and, that is not going to happen until we are forced into it. Some time to go yet but it will happen.
Take it easy.

SD

SD, I think you will find that it is all about fierce competition, where the consumer is king. Unless a company has massive amounts of intellectual property, there are no massive profits, but small margins. We have enough public companies publishing their figures, to substantiate that, when it comes to consumer goods.

People buy some things on price, but others on value for money or quality, where price is not the driving factor. A Mercedes, a Miele appliance, the latest drug for cancer etc, are not the cheapest, but more likely considered value for money and the best. That drives a whole other market, which is why Korea, Japan, Germany, Switzerland and other countries still do ok with manufacturing. They are simply smarter than we are.

In Australia the entrepreneurs can make far more money from real estate development or mining or building another casino, to have to bother themselves with manufacturing. So they don't bother, most of the time.

No Shaggy, it is not like at all.

I hated it, but had to either go offshore, Taiwan, for a number of solid brass & bronze products, go broke, or at least get out of those products.

It cost $6.00 for the brass to start making one product here in Oz. I could import the thing, made to my specifications, chrome plated, & assembled, with 3 bespoke rubber gaskets, for $2.00 landed into my store in Nerang Qld.

You are never alone in business, & although patented, it was not viable to try to protect that patent in court, against every copier, so we had to compete on price.

To put costs into perspective, the average price of shipping that product around Oz was $13.00 each. Even to Perth, it was cheaper by truck than by rail.

We have got a lot of things that need fixing to get our economy, particularly manufacturing in order, but god knows where you would start first.

It still comes down to profits. If you cannot make a quid on an Australian manufactured product it is obvious the answer is to go somewhere else where it is far cheaper to make.
A reasonable margin is expected and if overseas manufacture is the way to achieve this so be it.
I was not knocking profits but to maintain the margins an Oz product will need to be far cheaper to produce than it currently is.
Profits is what it is about, you source the product from the cheapest supplier. After all one is in business to make a quid.
Look at all the reputable clothing companies and their involvement in such places as Bangladesh. It is the way to make a quid. Who wouldn't if you were in business.
Until we become far cheaper than present the status quo will apply.
Take it easy.

SD

During the Whitlam years the international thinking on poverty was that we make everyone in the world equal by a level playing field so there are no isolated wealthy nations and no nations living in poverty. However not all factors like war, population growth, and primitive world views that hold people in fear and superstition of change. The view was all about sharing wealth and not about personal factors of education and social responsibility. The whole event went pear shape with the CEO's getting millions and the factory workers getting dirty, tired and pittance wages.

The so called "level playing field" has now morphed into giant industrial complexes set up in overseas countries that have very cheap labour where they quite often live and work in serf like conditions.
This gives more profits to the corporations and is the point of the exercise, not to improve the lives of the "poor people".
We should have never signed up for free trade treaties with these other nations, it has just destroyed our manufacturing ability and turned us into a nation of waiters and paper shufflers.