[glend (Glen)]

Consider the cost of replacing the key components, which are obviously junk, such as the focuser, the rings are held to the mount with wing nuts. The mount is garbage. Think of it as buying a project (objective and tube), which may, or may not, be worth salvaging.
Then you have to pay GST on top as well.
I agree that there are some excellent scopes built in China or Taiwan, but most of these are built under contract to retailers overseas which have fairly high standards specified. Factories such as Kumming United Optics are one, with customer brands such as Teleskop- Services (TS) built by them to strict QA standards. Synta is another one (which is the parent company of retail brands Skywatcher, and Celestron).