Horse 469 - Buy Australian Made

A man came on the radio this morning and told us to:
Make it your new year's resolution to buy Australian Made, it'll will keep your money in Australia and keep jobs in Australia.
I thought that that's a really good idea. Truth in point is that I have whereever possible tried to buy Australian Made and consequently, our house is full of a lot of second rate stuff.

Can you imagine if the walkman had been invented in Australia? It would have been made from teak, and have headphones from a P3 Orion; it would probably be about 9 inches wide and covered in leatherette and one of those dainty little bits of rag with a rubber band on the top like you get at school fetes.
What about video games? Do you really think that people would get hours of fun from a game like Sonic the Health Inspector or Super Accountancy Brothers?

Thinking about the inventions that Australia is famous for like the Hills Hoist or Blinker Lights on cars, what about the Ute and more importantly Penecillin - most of these thing were invented because the people who invented them actually wanted to be more lazy. Penecillin is unique because it was first discovered not in a laboratory but in a rubbish bin.
If you look at the inventions of media what has Australia contributed? Hawkeye, Racecam & Stumpcam; all of those are concerned with making it easier to watch sport because although we have this reputation around the world for being a great sporting nation, truth is that we'd prefer to watch it on telly because it's too hot to move outside.

SPC moved it's world wide operations to Canada as did BHP and before the Second World War Australia produced some of the best steel in the world. Our biggest customer was Japan who in time was using it to drop bombs of Darwin, a neat form of recycling wouldn't you say?

The fact of the matter is that Australia has always been owned by overseas, the British moved in and took whatever resources they could back to Blighty and as time moved on foreign companies bought everything that wasn't nailed down. Let's face it even Australia's Driving Future, the Holden Motor Company is owned by the people who say that what's good for the General Boomers is good for the USA.
I'm as Australian as Ampol? So what you're saying is that you're 50% British, 35% American and 15% conglomo?

My new year's resolution is to buy a fan to escape the heat. I intend to but Australian made but chances are it will have been made by someone in South East Asia who's desperately wishing to move to the country where they can buy something from the factory they just came from.