Originally Posted by
helispotter
That aside, it is also very difficult to believe that departments responsible for advising government on economic and industry decisions are stacked full of ANU economics graduates and that they somehow all have a 'group think' that seeks to "deliberately make it unattractive to manufacture in Australia".
My perception is that (foreign based) car manufacturers progressively departed from Australia as they were unable to lobby federal or state governments for financial packages, tax offsets etc that made it sufficiently attractive to maintain a manufacturing base here when they can find cheaper production line labour with lower work conditions elsewhere, perhaps also with more government 'sweeteners'. That is the nature of multi-national companies. It had nothing to do with any ANU Faculty of Economics. But happy to learn if anyone can explain the actual factors in the demise of that industry here.
As with most media news stories there are always two sides - the one the public gets to see and the one they don't. As someone closely involved in the car industry demise, all I'll say here is that the (government-assisted) selling off of the Melbourne plastics manufacturing industry and the resulting loss of thousands of allied jobs to overseas interests a decade or so before left the car makers with little choice. There were good reasons for GMH/Ford/Toyota to stay here if they could - which is why they are still around, even as shells of their old selves - but even local companies have to be competitive on the world stage.
Maybe it has very little to do with any ANU Faculty of Economics or any other large consulting firm's reports, but government meddling (both state and federal) in economic and industry decisions they don't understand is part of life in this country. The scary part is that our aviation industry gets treated no differently.