If you are rich and given the choice of taking money out of your business to buy more property and a bigger yacht or invest in modern equipment and processes you are most likely going to run your business like a slum lord until the business is no longer competitive and then blame the unions and buy goods from overseas and slap your name on them instead. Particularly if your a multinational (eg US, UK owned) and have no particular interest in this country beyond extracting its natural wealth. Meanwhile overseas the winning countries are nation building and trying to dominate strategic industries and supply chains for the benefit of their people.

Hence we don't have refinery capacity or competitive steel mills. It was run into the ground. Owners blamed local costs. Then threw their hands in the air. Always the same. Stupid country run by stupid people.

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. -- Donald Horne, 1964