As a former industry advisor for a State Government Department and later a CEO of a university technology transfer company I can give a little insight into this matter and also perhaps explain why Qantas is part of the problem.
The first thing you need to know is that there are quite a lot of highly profitable technology companies in Australia that are laughing all the way to the bank, every year.
Here is just one of them:
ANCA - The World's Most Flexible Tool Grinder - they supply Boeing, GE, Rolls, GM, you name it. There are plenty of others.
You never hear an Australian business saying "Hey! Look how profitable I am! Look how much money I'm making!" do you? I know one company doing aerospace stuff where the owners and managers collect Ferraris. There is a high tech company not more than Five kilometers from here that is the world leader in making the highest of high end luxury super yacht and racing yacht hardware, but you will never know..
On the other hand, you will occasionally hear on morning talkback radio, the small manufacturer getting worked up: "I provide jobs in Australia!", "I ought to be protected from XXXXX!", "The Government is taking too much tax", "I can't get workers", "unfair competition, cheap slave labour in China" etc. etc. etc. Ever heard one of them?
Well whenever the Minister or the Premier copped a spray from one of those on talkback radio and said "I'll have someone contact you", it was always poor old Sunfish who got that job! Let me tell you what I found every time I visited one of these businesses...
I always found plenty of Australian flags and boxing kangaroos everywhere. The factory itself was always run down. The equipment was old. The employees were untrained. The machinery and staff were incapable of producing a quality product. The owner was always hyper patriotic. When questioned about his competition and their product quality, there was invariably a lack of detail. If I raised the subject of quality and technology it was quickly ignored. This even applied to a division of a public company - they couldn't understand why their competitor from Europe consistently was cheaper! A simple look at the product, the factory and the systems explained why! What these guys invariably asked for in the end was a Government grant. So much for proud ultra conservative free market economics!
I saw other companies that were highly successful. They all had one very simple secret - they benchmarked themselves against their international competition and then set out to first match them by copying them, then doing their own R & D and finally beating them. I had guys in Thomastown
who knew that their competitor wasn't Joe Blow in Brisbane, it was Hitachi in Japan - and they were fighting over highly specialised markets that don't even
exist in Australia! I have dozens of examples. Does anyone know that the worlds leading manufacturer of specialised Tobacco handling equipment is in country Victoria? Mining machinery? ?
..And you get you knickers in a knot because Chinese hand tools are cheaper? Why are you even trying to compete in such a crappy market?
And this is where Qantas comes in. To compete internationally you need to go overseas - and often. You need to send freight overseas as well. So Qantas provides a ****ty slow and expensive service - and it effects Australian jobs and growth as a result.