The way I view shipping from overseas is why do the local people *deserve* my money? If they are value adding, providing after sales support, and actually doing *something*, then sure, I'll buy it (as would be the case with a coffee machine). If I'm having to buy, say a digital SLR camera (which I did recently) and it is $600 for camera + lens from overseas, and $980 best price in Australia, why on earth would I buy locally? If the lens or camera break, I can replace one, and still be better off than the initial cost would have been in Australia. GST is such a small portion of this issue. People say it hurts the local economy, but noone should get money for nothing. "Traditional" retailing is something that the large corporations expect to be able to do and just carbon copy their business model over and over again as a licence to print money, with no innovation. Yes the cost of doing business in Australia is high, but all that is saying is that we are above just buying in things, adding a stupid margin, and selling it for a profit. It doesn't help our economy long term, and doesn't do anything towards creating manufacturing jobs, technology jobs etc, as all the stuff people are buying is made/designed overseas already anyway. The government needs to stop trying to impose levies, tarrifs etc and let the TRUE value of the market work itself out (two examples spring to mind - 1) up until recently, QLD had a 4c per litre subsidy on fuel. Now that has been removed, and it's swung the other way to a carbon tax. 2) 44c/kWh lead in tarrif for solar, now, next to nothing). Let people see the true cost of things, and our manufacturing industries etc might actually be inclined to do a cost benefit analysis on moving forward, but when policies of the government of the day can change consumer demand for a product by 1000% overnight, why would anyone bother?
