Time for a rethink of car manufacturing in Australia

Andrew Hastie is right, we should build things again.

Amid the post-Cold War euphoria from the 1990s onward, globalisation’s architects like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and even John Howard, preached the ‘commercial peace’ thesis. Open borders, supply chains snaking across continents, and WTO rules would bind nations in mutual prosperity, rendering war obsolete. Australia, ever the eager disciple, signed free trade pacts from Singapore to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), slashing tariffs and welcoming Chinese investment in our ports and mines.

It worked, economically. GDP boomed, jobs flowed, and our ‘mixed economy’, or the pragmatic blend of coordinated and competitive capitalism that Stilwell had so deftly mapped out, thrived.

But geopolitics has a rude habit of upending theory.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Time for a rethink of car manufacturing in Australia.

MICHAEL DE PERCY | "Andrew Hastie’s recent call to resurrect Australia’s car-making industry is far from radical."

Hastie, one of the few Liberals demonstrating any sense of policy and whose China warnings deserve applause, argues for reviving Holden and Ford assembly lines to… pic.twitter.com/THyT040O0j

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) October 11, 2025

Are we really that gullible?

The media is spinning narratives. When threats are made, it matters to the press who makes them.

If Britain is the harbinger, Australia is the echo chamber, amplifying elite delusions while the rest of us foot the bill.

But if rising cost of electricity is a slow-burn outrage, the media’s selective outrage on security threats is a full-throated farce. Consider the horror that unfolded in Manchester on October 2, during Yom Kippur no less.

Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old who was reported to be on bail after being arrested on suspicion of rape, allegedly rammed his car into worshippers outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, then stabbed a security guard to death.

Two Jewish lives snuffed out in minutes of terror.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Are we really that gullible?

When threats are made, it matters to the press who makes them.

Some stories are elevated, even inflated. Others are buried or nudged quietly out of sight with inconvenient details omitted.

It is the difference between front-page outrage and an anonymised footnote.

Article |… pic.twitter.com/tQmNuWQPRB

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) October 6, 2025

This isn’t progress, it’s punishment

Modern communism is destroying True Blue Australia.

In the shadow of our sunburnt country, an insidious force is at work, dismantling the very fabric of what it means to be Australian.

It’s not the bushfires or the floods that threaten our identity. Those are the battles we’ve always fought and won.

No, the real enemy is the creeping tide of modern communism, disguised as progressive virtue and unchecked mass immigration, that seeks to erase our unique cultural heritage in favour of a homogenised, globalist grey.

From the demolition of our Federation houses to the silencing of political opinion, and now the swamping of our suburbs with endless arrivals, this ideology doesn’t just hate Australia, it loathes the rugged individualism that built it.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, This isn’t progress, it’s punishment.

HERE COMES COMMUNISM

From the demolition of our Federation houses to the silencing of political opinion, and the swamping of our suburbs with endless arrivals, this ideology doesn’t just hate Australia, it loathes the rugged individualism that built it.https://t.co/J2HXGFOyv7

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) October 4, 2025