Agree with Harley D.
The "yes Minister" script says it all - Sir Humphrey: "Minister, this project must not be allowed to succeed without our help!".
And sadly in Australia, help is not allowed so the project must instead be killed.
I guess in a way we should be thankful. The successful international local manufacturers I know of don't have any local competition, because nobody believes what they do is even possible. For them, they focus on beating Siemens, Mitsubishi, Sandvik, GE and similar international competitors, and a lot of the time they do.
The problem for us is that their only tax effective exit strategy is to be enough of an annoyance that their big international competitor buys them, takes their technology overseas and shuts them down. You walk away with Fifty million or so and lie on a beach.
I can think of a few companies that went that way - the competitor to helicoil, a medical plastics company and the first gaming company that successfully produced an almost impossible to counterfeit poker chip. I predict ANCA will be bought out and so will our beloved Ozrunways.
I wrote a paper on the subject for Government suggesting based on my experiences that no Australian manufacturing company could or should survive unless it was internationally competitive and that the key proof of international competitiveness was the ability to export. I then suggested that change was needed in our treatment of exports, export related expenses and export income taxation.
...And it was promptly buried deep.