The the high labor costs and need to re-equip and build factories and restore expertise in each sector it is unprofitable to bring manufacturing back to Australia without massive government intervention. Which is also against the free market.
Call for a return to “Aussie made” as you please, but you’ll be paying for it with higher prices, increases in taxes, and cuts to services.
And therein lies the problem..
we’re a bunch of hypocrites.
Societally, we have an expectation of an average wage around $50,000 pa (last time I looked). Yet we do not want to pay that sort of rate for most things we buy.
Washing machine made in Oz? Sure, no problem, 4,000 bucks. T-shirt from a department store? no, not $8, try $80.
Many people will say they are happy to support the wages they expect themselves but come time to hand over the cash, it suddenly doesn’t go very far.
Actually the wages in China are starting to get ‘beyond our means’ already. So now the search is on for the next bunch of slaves who can work for us- Cambodia? Laos? Even Vietnam is reasonably developed now and stuff made there is rising in price.