I think there is a small error in your logic mick.
We do not have any ICE car manufacturing in Australia at present, so forget all about "substituting" oil imports with EV imports. The EV imports will merely replace the ICE car imports.
However, by switching to EVs, we will avoid the full fossil fuel bill going to overseas oil producers (dictators, fundamentalist and/or corrupt regimes both allied and hostile to us) and instead have the opportunity to build smart grids here in Australia, developing new technology solutions and generating jobs in the renewable energy sector. Oh, and we will relieve at least some pressure on our health budget, but having lower death and disease from ICE exhausts.
As for our raw materials, I think, Australia ought to invest in vertical integration as far it is economically sensible to do so (not just because of some greenie agenda).
However, the main impediment to taking advantage of Australia's huge blessing of natural resources is that rather than people looking at the future and working backwards to work out how to get to the envisaged future and gain the maximum economic benefit in getting there, they are stuck in ideological partisan culture wars, thinking about how we have generated wealth in the past and that that is the only way forward...
I do give you credit for actually thinking a bit about EVs and you are already thinking about the next step - i.e. how to best benefit from the - in my opinion inevitable - transition. Your assumptions about labor intensive assembly might be correct for now, but perhaps less so in 5 to 10 years time - I am making the bold assumption that whatever level of automation we are operating at today, will only improve further over time, rather than decline.
Talking about "EVs" here on this thread (rather than EV components) is aimed at making people understand that this massive transition away from fossil fuelled ICE cars is indeed happening (many many posts here show that lots of people still don't begin to understand this).
Only once this has sunk in, can we - as a nation - start thinking about how to best exploit the opportunities that this creates.
