Aidan, EVERYTHING has a labour content to it, even your much loved digital technology.
Anything man does, creates, constructs, fabricates, even computers, has an element of design, but without any labour involved it will not happen.
And that is across the board, even computer manufacturing, even though a lot is done by robotics today, man is still needed in the mix somewhere, to use his hands and not his head.
The demise of Australian employment of ALL industries, is simple, the pay rate/scale!
BUT, as someone has already pointed out, if we don't get or have any orders, we are producing NOTHING.
We WON'T get the orders because we are too expensive in every sector of industry, and domestically as well.
Even I refuse to give Aussie companies contracts, unless they produced specific items and were not available anywhere else, such as Asia.
So let's recap.
Firstly we reduce our costs, wages, taxes, energy and so on.
And I mean by a third to a half, not some piddly 3 or 4%.
Then we look for markets where we can compete.
It won't be too long before the orders come in.
This method does not affect our cost of living because our internal costs will reduce, as long as everyone follows through, like the govt reducing their huge fuel gouging tax, and a million other costs.
The only things that will/should be dearer will be imports, and as far as I am concerned, they can go and get stuffed.
This way at least, we will have a healthy employment ledger and people will have plenty of work again.
I get the feeling when I look around at what is a sinking ship, that we are going to be forced into what I have speculated anyway.
Let's see, time will out.

Well it's not all bad.

Poles apart: Meet ‘anti-Greta’, 'climate realism' activist
http://youtu.be/l2cYMa5a71s

I wonder if the 'pandemic emergency' announced by the PM will make him realise the dangers of our over-reliance on China to keep our economy turning. No? I don't think it will either.

nothing should surprise about Aust's decline. signs were evident for decades.

thankfully Australia has a lot of stuff in ground

"thankfully Australia has a lot of stuff in ground"

That would be the same stuff that the looney left says is causing climate change - the stuff that we shouldn't be mining and exporting?

ttbn, well the looney left, and everyone else for that matter, can now relax and discard any fears they have been ignorantly harboring.
GW is apparently happening, but not as we have been mis-led to believe.
And IF it is happening it's because of the planet's natural life cycle.
These cycles I am eluding to, in particular, occur over the course of several hundred years.
Because of this, we do not get SUDDEN changes in climate, but SUBTLE ones, so we do not get CLIMATE SHOCK.
Now as it turns out the CO2 is directly linked to heating and cooling.
So we have been told a white lie, because even though CO2 is linked to temperature, it is released only AFTER and because of increases in temp, no matter how small.
Being that the oceans are ONE of the largest deposits or stores of CO2, it then releases CO2, BECAUSE IT IS WARMING!
So remember, warming FIRST, then CO2, not the other way round, and NOT because we are burning fossil fuels.
As I have said many times, man's antics on this planet have done NOTHING to harm or influence the planet.
So get on with your lives as you have always done and the next time someone tries to brow beat or shirt front you on us being the cause of GW, smack em in the face, preferably the mouth so they won't be able to speak of such rubbish, at least for as long as it takes for their injuries to heal.