The new political labels for today might be ‘inward’ and ‘outward’

The intriguing topic that formed part of the Lowy Institute’s annual survey last year was attitudes towards Australian manufacturing. Manufacturing is a special kind of politics; No matter what economists say, and no matter how Australia’s economic history has developed since the 1980s, your ordinary voters continue to believe we need to make more things here, even if they don’t buy Australian-made products themselves. This is a view that is little affected by the political preference of the party: most people – over 80% according to Lowy survey – I think we should produce more, even if it is more expensive than buying from elsewhere.