In any case, I think the phrase "everything in moderation" is the best guide. Making little changes and little efforts and not expecting change to happen overnight – indeed, while there is increasing urgency, change will almost always be slow to catch up. It might be considered that it's a race between deciding to change against the deadline where our freedom to decide disappears.

What is perhaps most distressing is that a large proportion of asylum seekers are fleeing man made "tragedies" by simply overpopulating their countries – from this all manner of tensions arise – particularly with young high testosterone men.

Having said that, we have a far more pressing issue. The labour and liberal parties have for decades adopted a policy of high-immigration – with each successive government, immigration has been steadily increased to the tune of current targets of over 200,000.

Howard was actually extremely duplicitous – may the fleas of a thousand camels rest under his armpits. But then, Hawke, Keating, Costello, Downer, Rudd, Fraser were just as bad – they've all been working towards facilitating the same end goal – to surrend Australia to the TNCs. Howard pretended to be tough on immigration with the Pacific Solution while opening the floodgates to migrants and further, as I understand it, not a single asylum seeker from Naru was refused entry.

It is very hard to say whether Australia perhaps had any say in this. It may be we might have faced a similar fate to Kosovo had our politicians tried to retain Australia's sovereignty – I just don't know. But, now with our backs progressively pushed against the wall, we are increasingly left with less choice.

R.Ambrose Raven :

31 Aug 2011 11:59:47pm

Danny, like many others, is obviously assuming that manufacturing and households can be saved simply by working smarter and harder within the current economic rationalist ideological paradigm. Yet the labour force is increasingly being polarised between the under-worked and under-paid on the one hand, and the over-worked and exhausted on the other.

Further, that economic rationalist paradigm has for the past three decades been successfully imposed or peddled in countries across the developing world by the IMF, the World Bank and its regional derivatives and donor agencies alike, and in advanced countries such as Australia by the likes of Thatcher, Reagan, and Hawke.

“Free” trade snake-oil merchants promote that economic ideology as promoting individualism, free enterprise, lowered taxes, deregulated economies and labour markets, and small government, the idealisation of “free” (actually meaning unregulated) markets, a servile State, and privileges the profit-seeking sector at the expense of public interests and welfare. In truth, it elevates greed above future private interests as well as above current and future collective community interest.

Manufacturing is indeed an important means of countering the increasing polarisation of wealth and income. Australia's ratio of household debt to disposable income is the highest in the world. We therefore have the furthest to fall, with extensive government intervention being essential if great and widespread hardship is to be avoided.

Many say that "Australia was riding the boom with no thought to the future." Yet it is the rich and powerful, and the politicians that they've bought who could do most to prevent such a situation, but who will ferociously oppose remedial action because it will reduced their super-profits. Workers in the resources sector are now, foolishly, often the most vociferous campaigners against redistributive measures such as the mining tax, just as timber mill workers were often the most vociferous supporters of native logging.

Australia’s focus on protectionism and wage equality arose from the external shocks of the Great War, the Depression, and the Pacific War. Those leaders emphasised the importance of nation-building and social balance for the maintenance of economic and political sovereignty and stability. However, that gradually ceased to be policy after 1970, when the leaders of those generations retired, to be replaced by those without any such beliefs.

Government Business Enterprises are also an important economic and social tool, both to sustain industries such as manufacturing and to ensure better redistribution of wealth and economic power. If the community service obligations of the (pre-flog-off) GBEs were brought to account, their financial performance would be at least equal any profit-seeker. Dividends would also have been paid to States and the Commonwealth.

Check this out, the ABC published a protectionist article by an Aussie professor Danny Samson:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2863686.html

We are close to the tipping point in a number of industries, whereby we will dip below the critical mass and permanently destroy capacity and wealth if we let this current trends continue…

Before we say it cannot be done, lets please study Germany, Sweden and other high-cost countries that successfully develop, create and export healthy amounts of manufactured goods! It can be done, but it needs visionary leadership from the start. I strongly care about the core role that manufacturing industry has in our wonderful economy and country and I want all our governments and our captains of industry to work together to support and encourage it.

What a refreshing change from the media's usual suicidal paralysis by blind adherence to free-trade dogma.

Right now our economy is being run by the whim of global demand and supply. Surely we can offer a more predictable and controllable solution other than the whim of the invisible hand.