In May last year - about the time Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic with others who sought to lay the blame at China's feet - Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie made a speech in which she accused the Chinese Ambassador of threatening that his country would stop buying our meat and drinking our wine, adding that international students and tourists would think twice about coming here.
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Lambie said the ambassador could make such statements because he knew our economic dependence on China was like a vein - if China turns it off, the heart of our economy stops beating.
Lambie put it this way: "We have placed all our eggs in one basket and that basket's been made in China; self-sufficiency is never going to be possible in all areas, but it should be in a few critical ones. For the rest, we just need to make sure we're getting our goods from a diverse range of sellers."
Lambie is adamant "our way of life is being propped up by a country that is hostile to it".
"It is a recipe for disaster (but) it is the lesson that we have to learn from the coronavirus crisis. The ideology which sees free trade as being more important than protecting people's well-being and livelihoods, has gone too far. Australia has to become self-sufficient again. We have to start making things again, because our complacency is putting our country at risk."
What comes next from Lambie is the best bit. She told the Senate: "I've got a plan to get us there. There are five things that need to happen before Australia can start making things again. Australian governments need to get active in supporting industries that are important for our economic health."
The senator talked about our governments boosting communities, new industries and industry policy that outlays money into businesses that can increase competition.
In short, the next four in the Lambie plan are: (2) "The government should be buying Australian made - if that means paying 10 per cent more to keep jobs and investment in Australia it results in all sorts of benefits to companies that support our communities; (3) we have to restructure our education system (with particular reference to the numbers of overseas university students allowed to study here); (4) we've got to renegotiate the crappy deals that both major parties have signed to in the mistaken belief that all trade is good trade, which is absolute rubbish; (5) we have to tighten the rules on foreign investment."
There's much more in Lambie's thesis about foreign investment, including the frightening example from her own state about a milk formula Australian company that wanted our government's help in 2017 to sell its product in Chinese stores that never eventuated - instead it was sold off to a large Chinese business.
Lambie again: "Once we sell off the farm gate, we can't get it back." She makes a strong point that in the plan she lays out it is not just up to government, but all Australians to get Australian industries booming and, as she said in the Senate: "Australia needs to start making things again."
As FOMM pointed out in our last column, Australia is going nowhere fast under the main parties' predominance.
While the cynics may suggest Lambie was once in the Palmer United Party, she had the foresight to resign and now stands in the Senate in her own right with increasing stature daily.
Meanwhile, though, the Morrison government shows no signs of improvement.
Nick Feik, editor of The Monthly's February edition, gave the government one of the worst drubbings FOMM can recall since just before Gough Whitlam got sacked.
Written under the cover-page title, A government of endless scandal (and pork barrelling, FOMM adds), Feik refers to the scandals that Morrison walks past, a government with a lack of accountability that has become systemic.
Feik posed the question: How could the government give $80 million of public money to a company whose structure was expressly designed to avoid scrutiny and tax liabilities?
The Monthly writes: "The number of grants programs exploited by the government in the lead-up to the last election would be comical if it was not so depressing."
The rorting and the scandals roll on and incompetent ministers stay.
As Feik called it: "Just a handful of journalists have done more to expose corruption than all federal government bodies combined. Morrison has made secrecy a principle of executive government."
