What has happened in the entire Western world is that technology has replaced manual and now even technical labour. WHat that means is that the price of labour must come down and with it its political influence and also its standard of living.
The existence of "career" politicians, know nothing parachute managers, "change managers" and similar classes of parasites is predicated on your labour being virtually worthless, so you can't make meaningful objections and turf the buggers out. Unless you can organise to do that (which you most likely cannot, considering that the Australian labor party, the natural leader of such a push, is awash with corrupt career politicians) then you are going to become peasants like most of the rest of the world and your children are going to be poorer than you.
This is just simple economics, and everything the Abbot Government does is designed to grind you deeper into the mud.
I doubt that any of you understand what is going to happen to the Australian community in the next few years as a result of the destruction of the car industry. Folks you aint seen nothing yet. The tensions between the eastern and Western states and North and South has some very ugly potential. Agriculture and mining dont need many people these days and those sectors are already trialling robot driven mining trucks, trains and combine harvesters to drive labor costs even lower. The only thing that will protect the iron ore industry by direct takeover and closure by disgruntled workers is their geography.
At the same time more wealth is going to be concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, while the rest get poorer, much poorer. That was why Gillard tried the mining tax to start redistributing wealth if that isn't done then the result is going to be civil unrest.
to put that another way, try explaining to a retrenched Altona car worker how its really OK that miners have exported his iron ore and cost him his job as a result of the higher dollar, but the money earned by the miner is all "private" and he sees nothing from it.
I've just done a road trip from Melbourne to Darwin and back and you should see how country towns are hurting through fly in fly out mining practices.
Luckily my Son chose to work in law enforcement - which is going to be the big growth area as the car industry collapse bites in Victoria and South Australia.