Nickel to be placed on critical minerals list, giving WA miners access to $4 billion fund, page-9

At the end of the day labour will always win out. It doesn't matter how much money the Australian Governments throw at certain industries, if it can be produced cheaply overseas, then Australian companies will always be in a problematic position. You can thank the union movements, and government policy decisions (from all sides of politics) during our short history for how this has played out. This also contributes to why we are paying $1M for a studio apartment in Sydney beachside suburbs while you can buy a house with everything in most European countries and Asia for $50k. Plus they don't tax you on everything too. We really do get screwed by governments in Australia and they continually make poor decisions which are impacting us all at some level. I don't know about you all, but everywhere I look around, people look to be stressed and on edge lately. Perhaps the cost of living crisis is finally starting to bite.

This situation is going to get even worse for Australia as countries like Indonesia and other developing countries rich in resources start to grow economically and technically. This will result in better ways (cheaper and faster ways) to extract their minerals, plus their infrastructure will advance making it easier to export. They also generally have better relationships with neighbours in the region to get better to deals to keep their industry strong.

We are going to have to find better ways to become more competitive in the future, without governments just throwing temporary funding at it, or there will be plenty more industries going bust in the future.