Australia in a new free trade frenzy....pro and cons please!

Diu,
you are not alone.
I am voting for smaller parties now for quite some time, fed up with Labor, and have to throw up when it comes to Libs.
Cheerio

 

My family on my fathers side were staunch Liberal/National voters, and my mothers side were staunch ALP voters, so it made for some interesting debates around the dinner table. I have been a swinging voter for the past 18 years. For 5 of those years, I voted for an Independent until he passed away with cancer, and for another 8 years I have voted informal.

I also use to think that voting for Independents were a good alternative for those people who could see the dysfunction and corruption within the major political parties, but that all changed, when Winsor & Oakeshott sold their constituents votes to Gillard for a bag full of beans, and it became obvious that Independents were just as crooked and corrupt as any politician from a major party.

Politicians, whether they are from major parties, small parties, or even Independents have been lying and decieving us for decades by telling us our public owned business like Telstra & the Commonwealth Bank that's worth $ billions, were better off managed as private companies, but on the other hand, they tell us they can manage our $Trillion economy - which version is the truth? Something just doesn't sound right when someone tells me they cannot manage a $billion public owned companies, but can manage a $Trillion countries economy.

 

Andrew Wilkie
I can't see him being corrupt.
I admire this guy for the courage he showed, when he made us aware about the lie behind the Iraq War and the real John Howard.
To me he is a national hero.
Regards

 

My attitude is that it is an opportunity to build quality goods using our ability to innovate or the resourcefulness to embrace and enhance new technologies. I suppose there are always going to be winners and losers but by the sounds of this there are more advantages than disadvantages. What we lose out on import taxes we should gain massively on company and income taxes if our industries are wise and forward thinking enough.

 

Cats if you ever said that around people he worked with, they would likely snap off your head and sh!t down your throat. To a lot of them he was an incompetent fool. Talking to some that worked with him during he so called intelligence years they didn't have much good to say about him. Before you ask, I had a mate that worked with him and was at a BBQ that he held.

As far as him being corruptable, I believe you might be right, I believe he is more of an attention getter than a money grabber. Funny he really does look like one of those whiney no friends snivellers that were at school. You know the one that made the teacher presents and always had a snotty nose, wore a skivvy, and had a lunchbox full of celery. That's him I can see him as a kid now, bullied because he was a dobber and brown nose, not sporty at all. Now he takes revenge........bwahahaha !

 

Interesting contribution SF,
I have never met the guy, nor can I say a lot about him.
However for blowing the whistle (Iraq War) and branding Howard he deserves a medal, oh wait, maybe a knights award.....
For the stand he took against the Gillard government he deserves one as well.
Cheerio

 

TV,
we can only gain momentum, if our standards in schools and universities are enabling our younger generations to come up with exceptional knowledge and ideas, which put us in front of others.
The current climate however suggests, that is not the case.
Our productive industries also make clear, that we cannot compete in other sectors as well.
I do think we have some hard years ahead of us.....
Whether it is the right way (the attitude of our current government would suggest this), to let the markets sort themselves out, needs to be seen.
I believe it is a big mistake....
Regards

 

Re Govt support of local industry : Short term propping up of viable local producers, to aid their long term survival, is common sense. By the same token, we have to know when to let go in areas where we can`t compete, otherwise the wooden shoe industry would still be flourishing. To perpetually deny market forces by "robbing Peter to pay Paul", is regressive. The key word is, "viability". They key analyst of viability, is market force.

The Australian car industry has been unviable for decades. It`s been a parasite on the economy.

 

Taking your hypothetical, "we" and "our" literally. How would you propose to invest your life savings? Which industry would you commit your future, and your family`s future to, to take advantage of new technologies, innovation and resourcefulness?

Or, by "we" and "our", do you really mean, "those other people"?

 

Partly correct. Common sense would suggest, that you don't hand out money, without asking something for it. Whether Labor or Libs, none of them applied some pressure on the car industry (mainly Holden and Ford), to modernize their cars to a point, where people happily buy new Falcons or Commodores. I am talking the ones, which prop along with half the fuel costs.....

With an ailing Australian manufacturing industry, where do you see us in the future? Selling off our assets to China and India?

What happens when this momentum slows down?

Regards

 

There has never been anything wrong with the engineering quality, and build quality of Australian made small and medium cars like: Fords Festiva & Focus, and Holdens Astra & Cruze, verses other foreign imported cars of the same class. To suggest Ford & Holdens small and medium cars could not compete on the same engineering and build quality as the foreign imported cars in the same class, is ridiculous. For example, the Ford Festiva & Holden Astra's were a much better quality engineered and built vehicles that was manufactured in Australia, over the imported Hyundai Excel, which had a reputation of being rubbish. The cheap Excels hit the Australian markets at $9,990. Whereas the Festiva's and Astra's that were forced to compete, were being sold for $12,999. If Australian politicians had placed tariffs on the Hyundia's that brought them up to the same selling price as the Ford Festiva and Holden Astra - not many Australians would have purchased the cheap junky Hyunadi Excels over the better Australian manufactured vehicles.

I agree that Australian politicians have thrown tens of $billion into the American car manufacturing companies here in Australia just to keep Australians employed in that industry, but would it not have been better for all Australians in general, and especially the employees in these manufacturing industries, if the politicians had of invested this money into buying shares in these car manufacturing companies as an incentive, rather than just giving to them as subsidities. These idiot politicians were just handing these foreign car companies a tax payers blank cheque, and expecting them to stick-around without any formal or legal obligations to the people and the country they made hundreds of $billion form in cars sales. This is just the sheer essence of stupidity as a business plan, and again, demonstrates that politicians are completely incompetent to manage our country and it economy.

Australias car industry is not unviable, its just unviable because we have allowed incompetent idiot politicians to sub-manage it. Australia has fantastic manufacturing and industries - if only we can get politicians out of them, and to stop interfering with them by allowing FTA's with every Tom, Dick and Harry that walks by.

 

If we could identify the time when unviability set in we could learn a bit I think.

 

Anyone with an open mind would see that the Australian car manufacturing industry is not unviable, is was designed to be unviable by politicians, by allowing foreign imported vehicles with limited tariff's on them to compete with our manufactured vehicles.

How many foreign imported vehicles do you think you would see in South Korea, that would be allowed to compete with their manufactured vehicles? I would bet money you wouldn't see any Australian made Holdens or Fords over there competing with their cars, but you might see some high end BMW's and Merc's.

Politicians have conned us, and selling us down the river for their own agendas.

Have to laugh that South Korea placed high tariffs on GM cars being manufactured in Australia and impoted to their country, but now they are allowing GM to make their cars over their and import them back into Australia. If Australia allows this without putting massive tariffs on them, they are simply dumbarse.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-15/gm-set-to-shift-holden-production-to-korea-under-fta/5201264

 

Just looking at China and India, they have only just begun to grow their technology and manufacturing sectors, we can expect major advances from both in the near future. There are enough parallel circumstances to draw comparisons between these two, and Japan of the 1960`s. During that period, Japanese goods were cheap, and generally low quality. By the 70`s Japanese technology had advanced to the point where they were producing highly competitively priced goods of rapidly improving quality. Japan understood "market forces", and had the disciplined, hard working human resources at their disposal. There is no reason to think that China and India, just to name two highly motivated, rapidly expanding economies, will be any different in the near future, but on a massively larger scale.

To think that technology will save us is naïve. Technology advances most rapidly within countries of greatest manufacturing production. Technology developed outside of these countries, is quickly swallowed up by the biggest producers, or superseded by them.

 

I agree. I also think we need to accept that the world is changing rapidly, and be prepared to change with it.

 

I was driving along the M4, heading out to the Western Suburbs and the radio was on a "Golden Oldies" station as usual. A verse from a song from long ago caught my attention.

My mind drifted back to when I did wear a younger man's clothes, back to a time when this song was on the pop stations not the "Golden Oldies". Remembering where I was living and travelling in time already I went back even further.

A young boy was screaming as he raced around the house, he was a wild Indian, his sister an unwilling victim. She raced in side to tell mum and the game was quickly over. It was a Sunday and not much was happening. Lunch had been delicious, baked chicken and vegies as usual. Every one was going to tack a nap except the boy, he had plans.

He went to the large hay shed and climbed on his grandfathers work bench, quietly taking two long bamboo poles that had been crudely shaped into fishing poles, he quickly headed off towards the river. He found the track he used to climb down to the river's edge, at a place where the river could be crossed. On the other side waiting was another young boy. He was sitting throwing rocks into the water when he heard his friend coming through the bushes. One whistle was acknowledged by another whistle and the boy jumps to his feet and starts to jump from rock to rock in a well thought out and used river crossing.

The two boys follow the water's edge and as they come to a steep rise, the first boy passes the second boy the poles and he climbs the slope using an old fence for footing. Half way up he turns, propping himself against a post and asks for the poles. The other boy now relieved on the burden carefully follows his friends footsteps. The process is repeated and they follow a hill line along the river, which now flows some 20 feet below them.

A few hundred yards further they come across a small wooden building. A distinctive humming sound is coming from the shed and the boys go around the back of it and follow a large steel pipe that comes from the building and goes to the cliff edge, where a bend was added to send it down towards the swirling river. Next to the pipe was a wooden ladder that terminated a few metres below a wooden platform that it passed through just above the water.

Sitting down on the platform their dangling legs didn't quite touch the water. Robert's did, if he strained and stretched out as he often did to remind the other boy that he was taller. Robert had an old tobacco tin in his pocket. He took it out and opened the lid. The lid had holes punched in it at no particular pattern, neither boy was sure if worms need to breath, or that it mattered, they were going to die hopefully in the jaws of a fish, a fresh water mullet that were in abundance and loved a big fat juicy earth worm.

An hour later they had 3 fish each, the boy had to go. Robert lived in the village, his father worked a normal job and had the weekend off. The boy's father had a small farm on the outskirts of the village, a dairy farm, there was no real weekends. They didn't do much on Sundays, and his Grandfather, Nanna and Aunty used to go to church. His Mother usually went to and he was dragged along on a few occasions. If we aren't supposed to work on Sundays, why did the preachers work, ruin a perfectly good day off.

But even God couldn't stop the cows from needing to be milked, nor could fishing.

That boy is now a grumpy old man, Robert passed away three Christmases ago. Liver disease, the two had been so close in those young years, but time and girls and things that happen caused them to take strikingly different journeys.

Robert was your quintessential Aussie. They became friends very young because they were both a little different, they never knew why, they didn't feel different. They didn't seem to fit into the molds that society had made for them. They found unity in not what made them different, for there many many differences even between them, but in what they shared, they both strove to escape from the small village life, if not for real, at least in their fantasies.

Robert never made it out of fantasy into reality, instead he slowly drowned himself in alcohol, passing away two years shy of his 60th birthday from alcoholic cirrhosis, alone, never married, no children. 12 guys and the barmaid from his pub made up to largest contingent at his funeral.

Robert could never understand what was happening to his world, he said many times "I just don't understand the way this world is going".

The song had long ended and I approached the exit to Toongabbie.

Having to get something from the supermarket we turned into it's small main street and parked across from the supermarket. I waited in the car.

I imagined an old fella was standing just down the street, I looked deep into his face and tried to imagine what he was thinking. He was looking towards the canal, and I imagined him remembering when it was a creek. His father probably took him fishing along it's banks with his brothers. He looked around him at the changes, men had come from across the seas in boats. They brought with them changes, different cultures, strange religions and costumes. His world, the only one he knew was changing, his culture was being lost, destroyed by these new comers. He had only one place to go, a place he held sacred, a place to remember how things were, a place where he and others could come and remember fallen warriors, and tell the stories of their own battles, but to only a chosen few, for these stories were often brutal, and more often hard to tell.

This sanctuary had it relics, pieces of the past carefully preserved, it and the memories were all this old fella had left, they would never take that away. The old fella walked towards a sandstone wall, a large glass door opened and closed behind him.

Sticky taped to the door was a small sign, The RSL club wishes to inform it's members that the clubs cafeteria and restaurant are being converted onto a modern Thai bistro.

Oh am I off topic?

 

Happy Easter everyone...I hope you made it to where you had to go....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSq4B_zHqPM

 

Same Magoo

 

I disagree. The world is not changing; Australians are just becoming more stupid in seeing other foreign countries who are putting tariffs and taxes on goods and services imported into their countries to protect their manufacturing and people's jobs, but here in Australia we just do the opposite. South Korea and other Asian countries put massive tariffs and taxes on goods made in Australia and imported into their countries, but here in Australia, we just import their rubbish with little to no tariffs or taxes, that is killing our manufacturing and industries. Technology will not save Australia, but putting tariffs and taxes on the rubbish thats flooding Australia from Asian countries just might help save Australian manufacturing and its industries.

 

Looking at the automotive industry as an example, bearing in mind that the market will sort out value and quality issues. If Asian countries can produce cars for aprox 35% of the price we can, and we react by creating a false pricing structure in the form of tariffs, import taxes, and other penalties, we are effectively creating a false market, indulging ourselves in denial of the efficiency scale. All we`re really doing, is denying Australian car buyers access to a competitive market, forcing car buyers to subsidise local inefficiency. By increasing our everyday transport costs, we further cripple our own economy.

Looking at Chinese car manufacturing. At present, the quality isn`t there, but if history is any indication, it soon will be. Japanese car manufacturing went from low quality, to high quality in a couple of decades. The present day Chinese situation differs from that of Japan, but the differences are in China`s favour. China doesn`t have to develop the technology for reliable cars, it`s been done, they have the technology. China has been subbing the manufacture of components to companies like Caterpillar, BMW etc. on a large scale for years now, they have the technology. China has a massive, and eager domestic market to use as a stepping stone to quality manufacture.

I agree that technology won`t save us, because our technology is in the main, theoretical. China`s practical technology will advance in front of ours, because theirs is practical technology. Australia can`t maintain it`s standard of living, and continue to waste resources as we do, and even begin to hope to compete in the future global market. Particularly when countries like Africa push us out of the resources industry. We are kidding ourselves.

 

It's actually a legitimate point regarding education. While governments continually look at attempting to reduce educational funding through the guise of making funding more efficient we are going to head backwards. Our university funding is simply aimed at an international commercial market without any real attempt to grow our local talent. Government high schools are lacking resources that enable students to advance sufficiently into higher levels of study. Sufficient cooling and heating in class rooms whilst seems small is actually quite a huge issue in terms of student concentration and engagement. We want students happy to be in the classroom rather than the back oval or street. Many buildings from what I see are dilapidated eye sores that don't conjure up any enthusiasm. Prop up our education system and we will develop a strong competitive edge as a nation.

 

So, you are suggesting, Australia is denying Australians access to a competitive market, forcing buyers to subsidise local inefficiency. By increasing our everyday transport costs, we further cripple our own economy. But, isn't that exactly what every Asian country in the region has been doing, by putting large tariffs and taxes on imported vehicles from other countries like Australian made vehicles, while they have been protecting their own vehile manufacturing and jobs? So countries like South korea with three car manufacturing companies are subsidising local inefficiency; increasing their transport costs, and crippling their economy when they put high tariffs and taxes on imported cars into their country that would compete with their car manufacturing?

I'm not suggesting we deny Australians the choice of what vehicles to buy, but we can make the playing-field level. Australia can adopt the same business methodology as the Asian car manufactures by insuring any foreign made vehicle of equaly quality imported into Australia would sell for the same cost as the vehicle manufactured in your own country. I don't see anything wrong with Asian economies like South Korea and China, who are actively protecting their car manufacturing and jobs, but here in Australia we are demonised if we even consider protecting our manufacturing and industries, but the Asians can do anything they bloody want, and its all goodie goodie for them.

Our standard of living has already dropped from three years ago. We don't get the same quality and quantity of product for $10 we use to get 3 years ago; we are now paying $20, for something we use to pay $10 for 3 years ago - our standards are dropping quickly, and its getting worse with every passing day. I see more and more Australians shopping in thrift shops, charity shops and Chinese $2 shops, because thats all they can afford to buy.

 

We have two close friends,
one a high-school teacher, one a primary school teacher. Both in their fifties, and both firm in their experiences, which suggest that the education level has dropped dramatically.
Our son (involved at Curtain) has had numerous international students coming to Perth for a six or twelve months stint, surprised how easy it is to achieve your bachelor degree in Australia.
We need to listen to foreigners/outsiders, to see where we really stand....
Everything else is dreaming....
Regards

DV, your post *41 was excellent, really loved it.... Good on you, reg.

Bye the way, how about that graph:

http://www.conference-board.org/ilcprogram/index.cfm?id=20992

 

Your post deserves more time spent on a reply than I`ve got. To my mind, the major difference between Australia and emerging Asian countries re import penalties is that they`ve got the whip hand. They`re prospects for growth of manufacturing for the near future are positive, so their tariffs & import taxes don`t have a "head in the sand" effect on their economies. They don`t need to protect their more competitive industries anyway. Our costs are too high, they can run rings around us anyway.

 

The river was a pivotal role in the young boy's life, many days spent fishing, many hot summer's days spent diving and splashing, laughter and yelling. Inner tubes and old oil cans were our toys, the willows and bridges were their diving boards.

As the years went on things changed, there was the year the three girls sprung the friends skinny dipping, there was many things, many changes.

The river was like an artery, it brought life to the valley. Water for the pastures, that fat contented dairy cattle grazed on, water for the vines of fat juicy grapes tended lovingly by Vignerons. It's sparkling waters filtered through pools and white rapids sometimes spilled out across the flats as it had done for millions of years. Bringing with it fresh soil ground by water and ice in prehistoric times from the lava flows.

It carved it's way through an old land, long gone the volcanoes and most of the mountains they created. Once majestic mountains had for millions of years by millions of rains and floods been carved down to small mountains and hills, rivers and valleys. Millions of years ago, in a time we can only really imagine, there must have stood vast forests of trees and plants that we can but imagine in size and nature. Changes in our planet, it's rotation and orbit, natural disasters or a master plan, things changed.

The mighty forests and jungles of prehistoric plants have for some reason long gone, but they left us something. Fossilized remnants of their existence. It is both fortunate and unfortunate perhaps, perhaps they have made it possible for us to create and run the machines that will be our final stand as well! Oil and coal, in this case it was coal, but the boys river, the green hills and pastures have all gone, they WILL NEVER be as they were then, no more boys to learn of life, death and love by it's grassy banks.