Future Made in Australia Act will cook the economy

It's not an option for Australia.

There Is one exception

There is a case for selective protectionism in certain very narrow cases. One really. That is the case of China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using trade as a form of war by other methods.

That means we should be very careful dealing with them, and tariff and other non-tariff barriers can be justified to ensure that we are not put at a security disadvantage by relying on a strategic competitor for essential goods.

National security is one of the themes of Mr. Albanese's speech, although he doesn't name any particular strategic threat. But if he really wanted to do something about national security he wouldn't start by altering trade policy.

The greatest threats to national security sit around his Cabinet table.

They are Chris Bowen, who is leading a disorganised lurch towards renewable energy without the required infrastructure and technologies in place; Penny Wong, a foreign affairs minister who lacks a consistent vision and application, most recently displayed over Gaza; Tanya Plibersek, who is over-hauling the Environmental Protection, Bio-Diversity, and Conservation Act to make it even harder to develop large projects in Australia; and Tony Burke who has instituted industrial relations changes that take Australia back to the 1950s.

Mr. Albanese wants to build the industries of the future, but we have an economy that can't even build enough houses for the people that live here.

We also have a Defence Force that is not fit for purpose to the extent that it couldn't even spare a ship to patrol the Red Sea when asked by the United States.

The speech is in some of the grand traditions of Australian Labor.

It is insecure, looking abroad for leadership, and it thinks that the cosseted apparatchiks who make up the cabinet, and have spent a lifetime playing politics and nothing else, know more about enterprise and risk than the people who actually invest.

For a while, as Australia raced up the global wealth charts, after the reforms of the 70s and 80s, it really did look like the future was being made in Australia. We weren't looking to what others were doing, but blazing our own trail.

That future is now being cut down by a government that talks a good zinger and writes a good media release, but has outdated and ideological obsessions that it can't even express coherently.