I have some sympathy for the Australian workers that have been laid off, but I hold a view that a country like Australia with a high standard of living cannot compete inwith human-resource intensive manufacturing against a country with a lower standard of living when it comes to human-resource intensive manufacturing.
Unless people want and expect the standard of living to decline in Australia, and for us to subsist on staple foods, I think this was inevitable.
But Australian owned is still one step up from all the foreign made and imported goods.
What we should be focussing on, but always fail to do, is to develop and successfully capitalize intellectual property. This is a great shortcoming of Australia, with the USA beating us to the punch almost always.