Hey Barrel, I had a similar chat with John Howard in the late...

Hey Barrel, I had a similar chat with John Howard in the late 90’s, and he had the same attitude towards the Oz economy.
He believed Australia didn’t need shoe / clothing et al manufacturing, but rather highly elaborate manufacturing and a concentration on our services sector.
His reasoning was - we could do this better than low cost economies. At this time I had been making ‘n marketing a pretty sophisticated bit of kit into East Asian countries including China for the best part of a decade, and could see that they weren’t simply making low value stuff. They were also rapidly building a strong services sector.
I recall him derisively snorting when I suggested why not make the best shoes and clothing, especially from our abundance of leather and wool?
I for one believe our state and federal governments should be ‘picking winners’ and helping promising start-ups like our battler, when it was struggling a couple of years ago.
The BHP briquette saga aside, I also believe we should be doing a lot more value adding, rather than simply digging stuff up.