Originally Posted by
JDNSW
Rubbish. Australian manufacturing was promoted by successive government from the end of WW2 for the next thirty years, changing only when improving communications and burgeoning overseas travel revealed to Australians just how much they were paying for the privilege of a manufacturing industry that was steadily moving backwards relative to the rest of the world.
Nobody 'dictated' that Australia should be a primary producer, but the reality of manufacturing for a tiny population spread all over the country meant that Australia was supported by primary production, at least from the 1850s (before that it was supported by British capital and British taxpayers). Most manufactured goods were imported, largely from Britain until WW1, the exceptions being mostly manufacturing set up to ensure skills for maintenance on , for example, railway locomotives, plus various things made specially for Australian conditions.
WW1 saw the start of serious manufacturing, mainly because of the shortage of shipping, and political pressure started after the war to keep restrictions on to protect manufacturing set up during the war, a good example being the motor industry.
WW2 saw Australia literally needing to manufacture almost everything needed - there was little alternative, and this meant a large manufacturing base at the end of the war. This benefited from progressively increasing protection as the relative costs of Australian manufacturing rose, and as manufacturing round the world grew to favour increasingly large scale production, not available here with our small markets.
Another factor has been Australia's unwillingness to invest in manufacturing, and demonising anyone who dares to actually make a profit from it.
The protection was obviously unsustainable by the 1970s, and the rolling back of it in a major way started with the Hawke government, and continued more or less to the present.
In supporting this rollback by electing governments who have continued it, Australians have shown that they are not in favour of paying a lot more for a limited choice, just to support a tiny proportion of the workforce, plus a largely overseas owned shareholding.
Through the years, there have been some highlights of Australian manufacturing. Perhaps one notable achievement is that for close to fifty years up to the early seventies, Australia produced the world's cheapest steel, thanks to some canny management and cheap feed materials. But this was a fairly isolated example, and came to an end thanks to the small Australian market coupled with the impossibility of export in the face of everyone protecting their steel industry meant that the new, larger facilities needed to compete with overseas producers were not viable.
On the other hand, Australians continue to show a strong consumer preference for Australian grown and processed food, and some of this for example baby formula and wines, have a good export market. But these are 'manufacturing' jobs that can be done efficiently on a relatively small scale.
