As has been said many times: Australians want to live their current lifestyle without being prepared to pay for it. Have a look at the cost of living on Sinapore, Japan and Europe! And yet, Singapore is just about the economic centre of the world, Japan is one of the most prolific manufacturing centres of the world (behind China and India) and Europe still manages to keep its aviation and certain manufacturing industries (eg. cars) going, despite the ongoing woes of the Eurozone.
Perhaps Australia needs to return to the "old days" of being a bunch of protectionist a***holes. Hike tariffs for anything imported into the country, use those tariffs to subsidise our own industries to kick start manufacturing and farming again.
But of course no one would vote for the party that carried that policy to an election because everyone only wants to pay $500 for a 50" plasma at JB Hi-Fi, not $5000...