You have to remember that back then the political and business elites were behaving as if the mining construction boom and its easy money were going to last forever meaning everything else was being shifted offshore. I worked for several companies who were not only failing to innovate but were busy giving away their IP to China, India and South Korea as part of sweetheart deals were they would produce what had been made in Australia for many years in their plants for lower cost. Easy money, except for the fact it took much longer and cost much more to get them up to speed than expected (even though the engineering teams involved in the technology transfers had warned them).
Too many decision makers were a) risk adverse, b) convinced local people were incapable of doing the work, c) that when an overseas supplier said they were capable that they were honest / competent. End result work went offshore, the result was not acceptable and had to be fixed locally by the gutted, stretched, stressed, over worked remnants' of the teams who used to do the work locally to a much higher standard and lower real/whole cost.
