Clever-country mentality can get us back on our feet

COVID-19 has been a trying time for us all and some Gold Coast businesses have suffered more than most. My message concerns the Gold Coast in particular and the nation as a whole.

This is the time to plan for future prosperity not exclusively dependant on interstate or international tourism, though this will remain a big part of our businesses in future as before.

All governments and leaders of commerce must begin a transition away from total reliance on tourism and dependence on foreign suppliers of goods, many of which are sadly inferior products and which become unobtainable in crisis times. Don’t put it in the too hard basket.

We have ample supplies of all raw materials to manufacture all our needs and we have done this and prospered for a long time before greed exported all our industries.

Some will blame the unions but without them you get slave labour. But that’s another story.

We made ships and locomotives in Maryborough, aeroplanes during World War II, the great Snowy Mountain Scheme (pictured), on our own, steel equal to the world’s best, and many inventions that have been taken overseas, as International Harvester. Don’t say we cannot do it.

The brilliant minds that have sold our electricity supplies, the port of Darwin (treason) and have given away our gas exports (we are the biggest exporter of gas in the world and have to buy it back from foreign companies to prop up domestic supplies) sicken me. Time we got some backbone and forgot about being a nation of waiters and barmen for the visitors who are on the way to becoming the bosses.

RAY MURRAY COOMERA