Australia’s unsettling lack of industrial and productive self-sufficiency was accentuated throughout Covid, with the ramifications of vulnerable international supply chains spurring domestic economic turmoil that has only since been exacerbated by Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The narrative that has long been pushed by our nation’s politicians and mainstream media is that upward pressure on the prices of a number of critical goods is a ‘global issue’, a sentiment that is both extremely misguided and disingenuous.

The reality is that Australia has, over the course of the last few decades, become far too integrated and reliant on the international economy than...