>>508654059>>508654201>>508649531>>508649612>Why doesn't your country use your natural resources for developing domestic production?Essentially, Australia was perceived as a bad place to invest when the global markets really opened up in the 50s and 60s. We had high/good domestic production/manufacturing which made everyone pretty happy and wealthy, but after a couple of decades we had fuck all foreign investment. In the 70s and 80s our governments slowly wound back a lot of protectionism in favour of free market globalism (especially deregulating the banking sector, which up until then could only source/loan money from/to domestic entities). This made us better for foreign investment (kickbacks for politicians) but worse for domestic investment. But so long as everyone had their knick-knacks and cheap tat no-one minded much. As a country we grew extremely wealthy (GDP per capita) throughout the 90s, but like all good things it has to come to an end. By the time anyone recognized the problem we were looking down the barrel of the fate of all western nations (too much debt/unfunded liabilities, not enough people, no manufacturing base to prop us up, economy based on service and exports). Without manufacturing we had nothing to offer except raw materials, which due to our weak political class was sold off to multinationals who then offshore all their wealth and pay nearly 0 tax.
We also have a very low caliber of politician - like, genuinely midwit 90IQ pencil pushers with no vision, strength, strategy, or charisma. They're cheap and can be bought off for roughly the price of a new car. A friend of mine who was in politics for nearly a decade has explained much of this. They're very well-meaning, but they are utterly without talent, especially when it comes to things like unintended consequences and future-proofing.
tl;dr we're the lucky country which ran out of luck