I'm guessing the lessons learned during and the changes after WW2 about self sufficiency and dependency have been lost to the global machine.
We seem to have settled back into our traditional role as a primary producer and digging minerals out of the ground. But whenever there is an election the pollies wheel out handpumping footage of companies that have a spartan industrial shed with a 250sqm net lettable footprint as being example of our industrial and manufacturing might. Invariably it's the biggest 250sqm lump of concrete in the poverty stricken third world dominated southern hemisphere.
