The major difference between when we made things, and not; tariffs.
Australia, like all western countries that made things, used to have huge import tariffs.
As soon as these were gone, most industry went overseas chasing the profit. A lot of manufacturing countries, even though they pay less, still have large tariffs. This was shown in Thailand when we exported a few Ford Territory's there, and the Thai government chucked a big tariff on them. There are no tariffs for all the diesel utes they ship here of course...
If you go back in time, you couldn't get a "cheap" mower any more than you could get a cheap TV. These were major purchases, most of which were made here by people on decent wages. Would people be happy losing all their cheap products in order to get manufacturing back? I strongly doubt it.
It would probably take a shock similar to what caused our leaders to begin our industrialisation after WW2; almost getting invaded by a foreign power and finding at the time that we made bugger all, being a resource bucket for Britain and importing everything from there, and relying on our allies for weapons, etc.
