Australia has to pull its weight if its going to compete with the rest of the world and wants to make a trade surplus instead of the normal trade deficits we have getting so used to.
Its all about being smart in what we are doing and to put more money in research, education and incentives for companies to export.
We have all the minerals the world wants but what do we do with them?, we send them oversees for a pittance and buy them back in the form of cars, computers and other consumer goods.
No value added we just sell our minerals to other nations can so they can produce the goods we have to pay so much for. Our forestry workers do no better job with just selling wood chips and not the chipboard or other value adding products to extract the added value.
If we can not produce the goods at a competitive level with countries like China and India then we should work smarter and build a high tech or simillar niece industry to compete with these countries.
What we are doing now is training students from oversees in our universities and make study once again expensive for australians hereby creating a braindrain in society.
As long as we keep digging minerals out of the earth and do nothing with them except for selling them oversees our trade deficits will no go away.
What we will see is an eroding of our currency and every big miner in foreign ownership with less and less profits staying in Australia.
Unless we change our ways we may have to sell Tasmania one day, to keep our head above the water.......
