It seems like the only thing we’re able to make in Australia these days is an argument.
In case you missed it, a political firestorm has raged for weeks now, after Liberal MP Andrew Hastie made the far-right suggestion that…
Australia should make things in Australia again?
It is surely a testament to Australia’s political backwardness when a statement like that is considered controversial.
Do keep up, Australia – while we’re bickering about making cars, all the others are talking about reindustrialisation and deportations now.
Remember, Donald Trump has been talking about reindustrialising America in a serious sense for over ten years.
And is largely succeeding, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology writing that manufacturing reshoring is “accelerating”.
“This trend will lead to reduced dependence on overseas suppliers, mitigate risks, and create more resilient domestic supply chains.”
In fact, his efforts were so well-liked that even Democratic President Joe Biden carried the manufacturing torch, increasing jobs in the sector by 10 per cent.
Vice President JD Vance himself knows that manufacturing, like in Australia, is part of America’s identity.
“If we do not protect our nation’s manufacturers, we lose a fundamental part of who we are as a people,” he said speaking at a factory earlier this year.
“Making things, building things, working with our hands is America’s heritage.”
Likewise, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has indicated it’s “Main Street’s turn”, after Wall Street grew wealthy for decades off the back of globalisation.
With that in mind, maybe Australia’s progressive critics are right in one sense.
Maybe we are a backwater country, insofar as our political and media class still espouses the same tired old economic and political liberalism that our contemporaries have long ago abandoned.
But this debate has done well to accelerate the national conversation and highlight a glaring problem staring us in the face.
Namely, Australia’s economy today is fake.
Australia has lost over 500,000 manufacturing jobs since its peak in the 1970s, while 80 per cent of new jobs created last year were in the public service, or “non-market” sectors such as the NDIS.
Meanwhile, Australia’s housing market rose by $4 trillion in just five years since the pandemic, and is now worth $11.5 trillion.
At the same time, real wages went backwards.
If it sounds too good to be true, maybe it is.
Viral photos of people lining up to buy gold and silver bullion across the country shows that Australians are increasingly uneasy about the economy.
The whole situation is tragic.
Because it means we’re not using our incredible human capital, our high-trust systems, our endless resources to innovate, build, and solve important problems.
Instead, we’ve settled for importing migrants and exporting natural resources, and watching from the couch as our home prices tick up.
No innovation or productivity needed, no dynamism or risk-taking required – just ship people in and watch the line go up.
That’s our modern economy today.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Overseas, Donald Trump has shown that – with a few key policies – national renewal is possible.
You can recalibrate your economy towards putting your people first.
You can have net-negative immigration while growing the economy, like he has – with GDP rising by 3.8 per cent last quarter.
And you can reshore manufacturing – not with green-focused subsidies like Labor – but with tariffs, “the most beautiful word in the English dictionary”.
Compare this with Australia: last year, our population grew by 1.7 per cent thanks primarily to immigration, while GDP only grew by 1.3 per cent.
Trump knows we don’t need immigration to keep our economy afloat, or that manufacturing is just an idolised nostalgia for years past.
On the contrary, his administration recognised that a nation-first economic agenda isn’t nostalgic; it’s the future.
One that is anchored in one’s heritage, utilised for future prosperity, and made to meet the needs of the moment.
That’s not looking back, that’s looking forward, and it’s time Australia did the same.
Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that what we’re doing is no longer working.
Australia’s strategy of growing the population to grow GDP is getting diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, reliance on exports, imports and offshoring has left us at the mercy of foreign nations and corporations.
Putting Australia first means recalibrating our economy away from dependence on the outside towards self-reliance.
It’s time Australia stood on its own two feet again.
To rebuild our manufacturing capacity, our self-reliance, our dynamism as a nation.
If all we can make in Australia is an argument, then let that argument be that it’s time to put Australians first again.
Jordan Knight is an adviser and director of the National Conservative Institute of Australia. He is a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, known as the nerve centre of the American right, and the founder of Migration Watch Australia.