''Do I read into your rant that had we developed since 1788 with only a single government and, in due course, lots of municipal councils that we would be a better place?''
well engineered - YES
One nation - one set of laws across the country (governing by location). Local governments having power over administration - but, national laws where we have a hodgepodge of states laws ----------- we would have to have really tried to make it a bigger mess than it is
''That we wouldn’t have relied on imported capital to develop the country – with that imported capital thereby acquiring “resource companies” etc.
Or should our nation of what was 7m in 1945 have tried to bootstrap ourselves with our puny financial resources and resisting overseas investments. In what shape do you think Australia would be today?''
Nope - we could have done it vastly differently -
still had foreign capital - but, instead of laying down and taking what foreign capitalists demanded -
just say - NO ------ these are our conditions
and those conditions would have included -------- hefty national ownership - no liability, laws that said we would not allow ourselves to divest those assets that WE owned - to private enterprise - to 'privatise' and sell off at the beckoning of things like superannuation companies.
we would have also put in price caps for guaranteed supply to our own people
for things like gold and farmland - have BIG strong rules about having any foreign capital at all involved -
the world comes to Australia - for gold, for food ----------- we had and have the power.
