IMO, the article starts well but lapses into vagueness and the typical mistake that blanket tax carrot and a touch of government encouragement can do the job by encouraging foreign investment.
IMO, an industrial revival plan has to be localised in special economic zones dedicated to export and Aussie owned rather than be so general that it lapses into an tax driven R&D program which does bugger all except offer tax deductions to already profitable businesses.
IMO, the employment of the ex-CEO of Dow, Andrew Levers, is a good move because before becoming Dow's global CEO he was its China CEO so as an industrial supplier to Chinese industrial start ups, he should have direct experience of the nuts & bolts of industrial start-ups. I suspect, however, that he will want to involve his multinational mates rather than nudge the Morrison Government towards direct Government involvement.
Shuffling tax legislation is not the way to go, IMO. When there was double R&D tax concessions for industry in the 80s & 90s foreign manufacturers simply assigned mickey mouse projects to the Aussie branch to avoid tax and as we subsequent seen, this did not stem the demise of local manufacturing.
Instead we need local Government involved in the early phase of special economic zones in providing land, buildings and services. After that there is capital , ideas, skilled personnel , marketing, sales and distribution .
We have to start with competitive advantages not weaknesses & this is why, IMO, we should start by adding value to our current raw minerals & food.We have FTAs with about one third of the world's population so all we have to do is to produce high quality goods and conquest that sement of global markets. The Germans & Japanese have done that with excellent quality good and despite their major corporations chasing cheap 3rd world labour, they, nevertheless managed to preserve their domestic high quality core industries.
We dont import athletes to represent us in the Olympics or in International Sport so why should we import industrialists to do the job for us?
