The secret is to get export firmly into your brain and design and build a product that can be exported.
That means it has to be internationally competitive.
You can manufacture aircraft in Australia, but you have Three barriers to surmount.
1. Other countries protective policies towards their aircraft industries - don't even think of exporting to America unless you are a mature exporter with a well established brand and no American competitors. Even if the overt protectionism embodied in their regulations doesn't get you, the covert grassroots protectionism will get you every time. I could tell a story or Two.
2. The Australian Government policies are not conducive to building viable export industries unless you are into mining, or agriculture. They simply don't care because based on "conventional wisdom" Australia is too small to have the economies of scale to manufacture much unless it is very Australia specific like sheep shearing gear.
Unfortunately the governments "conventional wisdom" is a relic of 1950's thinking as Japanese Kanban systems and modern computer assisted manufacturing has been driving the economic order quantity of everything to one unit.
Gippsland Aviations computer based manufacturing set up provides just such a system with much better accuracy than anything Cessna and Piper could achieve, at least in their piston range, so I wwould be surprised if their direct costs were not competitive.
What isn't competitive is the bloody minded red tape involved in the tax system treatment of export related costs. If you want to export you have to be constantly on an aircraft and in your customers faces. Our Government doesn't understand this.
As for CASA, they don't have a mandate to support let alone facilitate an export oriented aviation industry, in fact they did everything possible to frustrate Gippsland Aviation since day One, if what I was told is correct.
As for Austrade...what a joke. they once set me up for a meeting in Los Angeles with a guy who turned out to want us to make military stuff to circumvent U.S. Government trade sanctions.
3. The finance system here doesn't understand about export or financing aircraft manufacturing. Neither does the Government. That means your cost of funds is going to be higher than your competitors.
There are people and companies that successfully export very high tech Australian manufactured goods, but they are not household names.