We all look at Holden, because it is regarded as iconic, but there are dozens of other companies struggling in todays environment,  basically our cost of labour, and our hot economy have made it uneconomical to make anything that can be made elsewhere and transported here.

Why?

We have enjoyed a very high standard of living, and we have achieved that by paying ourselves well above the average of even the developed nations, never mind our current competition.

Our economy is running hot, because we are in the fortunate position of being able to export massive amounts of minerals. This gives us a strong balance of trade, which strengthens our dollar.

Our banks and finance industry was/is more regulated than most around the world, it is/was government guaranteed, again this promotes our economy as a strong place to invest, pushing the dollar still higher.

Our interest rates are and have been for a long time higher than most of the rest of the world, this also encourages foreign investment and pushes the dollar up.

In reality the Auto industry should have gone years ago, we are currently funding it to the tune of about $48k a year per job.

What can be done about it?

Nothing will save the auto industry.  Australia should be looking to the future, say five to ten years and saying what do we want to see. Developing a strategic vision, then concentrating on developing the industries where we have an advantage, and not just stopping at the easy bit, but making the investment to value add to the resources we have.

Mining, dont just dig it up and sell it, convert it into something more valuable then sell it.

Agriculture, we have great agricultural environments (fertile land, favourable climate, etc) we should be using this to become the food bowl for the rapidly developing nations to our north. Again not just growing and harvesting, but processing into what people want to buy.

Someone mentioned earlier, that we should globalise wages and conditions, excellent idea comrade, but how would people pay $300k mortgages earning $15 a day. Moving to a global standard (average) will never happen, but our standard of living is going to have to drop, this can be achieved in two ways: real wage reduction (unlikely), or massive inflation (very likely), similar to what happened during the 80s, without wages keeping up.

Given our current political system where politicians are more focused on improving their chances in the next election (protecting their job) than they are on fixing the economy, I doubt if anyone will take the hard decisions, thus I suspect we will just languish along waiting for the inevitable economic disaster to happen.

From the affluent position we are in today (look around at the cars, houses, big TVs, etc.) we are facing a significant reduction in our standard of living. I for one am not prepared, and I will find it very tough.

Thats my brain dump and assessment of the situation, I am sure many will disagree.