I was thinking of adding value where cad/cam features prominantly such as casting & machining aluminium automotive castings from alumina. Take for example Gladstone alumina smelter which produces alumina ingots and exports them. While the molten alumina is in a smolten, rather than quenching it, it can be converted to aluminiom alloy, casted & machined with the minimum of labour when these castings can be exported all over the world rather than to China in alumina ingot form
Steel making is now mostly automated where the key competitive element is economy of scale. It seems absurd to export premium iron ore & premium met coal to China and then China exports the steel to us and the rest of the world.
IMO, we are still colonials except now our colonial masters are the Chinese and the Multinationals and the best we can hope for is a job!
