[Crazy Dazz]

Australia SHOULD be making Steel, Aluminium, Copper, etc. Furthermore we should be making the products make from those materials. This includes Cars.
Obviously in order to do this, you need to be making a lot, making them well, and selling around the globe.
We SHOULD also have a massive ship-building industry here.
Australian expertise in the Mining Industry is acknowledged and sought world-wide, yet we make none of the heavy equipment here.

For some reason, successive governments, of both colours, going back 50+ years, decided it was just too hard for Australia to have a strong Manufacturing sector, and put it all in the "too hard" basket.

The actual problems run very deep. Our cost of land is fekking ludicrous, the cost of housing too high, and the cost of general living. So our labour is too expensive, and in many of our industries damn inefficient. That, and the complete lack of government incentive to do business in this country.

I'm not saying we should have kept building Falcons. But we should be building Rangers, some updated version of the what the Territory should have become, and who knows what else. Also keep in mind that the last Falcon ad I recall seeing on TV was from the 80's "I'm Glad I Drive a Falcon." Maybe if they'd spent a bit more on marketing their products???

Ultimately it came down to this:
The Labour Party believes that all big corporations (such as Car Manufacturers) work directly for satan, and was far to interested in pandering to unions and the greens.
The Liberal party hated the unions, saw no votes in the manufacturing industries, and obviously couldn't get big enough "donations"/bribes from the corporations.
So in the end nobody stuck up for manufacturing in this country.