Abbott's report card

Well the car industry is officially gone as of today which is just what this government wanted after hearing Hockey goading Holden to leave yesterday. I got my start with Holden nearly 30 years ago, as did my dad 25 years before that. They were training 100 apprentices a year back then. Those tradesman went on to build Australia's manufacturing, mining and defence industries.
I have worked in all those industries in my time. So where will we get our skilled workers in the future once the Coalition puts the final nail in the coffin of our manufacturing industry?

Very sad day. But if the country supported the company by buying the product rather than subsidising a brand that they are turning away from, we wouldn't be in this position. My last four cars were Holdens, sadly I'm in a minority.

Designers and visionaries for the company obviously read the market wrong, but even then I doubt it would have been saved. Australians, for some reason, don't like to support Australians...

floyd wrote:

Environment: approval to allow dredged sludge from port expansions in FNQ to be dumped on the Great Barrier Reef

Its not ON the GBR floyd. Yes it may be in the marine park, but it is one big MF park. It is a few miles offshore in the "desert". The nearest reefs are about 20Nm away and that is part of the stipulations and conditions of the approval.

But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good spray :)

As a fellow crow-eater, I hear you, yorkessurfer...SA is gonna be hurting, as will we all, in the long-run...and that's what the LNP doesn't seem to get...the long-run. Well, it's under-educated, over-mortgaged 'aspirational' supporters anyways. Long-run ideological shenanigans were the Howard government's (ipso facto, now Abbott's B-team) raison d'etre. As an unrelated side-bar, and directed to you yorkessurfer, check out my profile pic...ring any bells? Been looking for it a fair while. Those were the daze! Some kind of copy of this would be greatly appreciated...or even, dare I say, a slide?? How to contact and arrange? Obviously, if you're not who I've been informed, disregard...

Construction of Curtis Is (3 LNG plants atm and one awaiting approval) currently employs 10,000 people, 45percent of which are local for 3 years. They all spend money in the local community and surrounding areas including tourism. Not quite sure on permanent employment upon completion, but they will also rely on local contractors for ongoing maintenance.
HPX3 (Hay Point, Mackay) construction 1,500 employed for 3 years, majority local and local buisnesses and contractors. Ongoing same as above.
Abbott (no pun) Point, Bowen. Similar stats to HPX3.
And all the FIFO's spend money in the local communities where they stay.
The FIFO communities that suffer are the ones where no-one wants to live. ie away from the coast. That's why they are FIFO because people just don't want to live there.

They are all there to keep people in jobs and keep the country running. The first 2 (Curtis & HPX3) were approved by Labour. Who gives a shit which side of the political fence approved them. The country would come to a grinding halt without them. Central Qld have a heap underway, massive 5 year LNG in Darwin, Barrow Is WA, plus shit loads more. All with strict enviromental conditions.

FA tourism out of Gladstone, Mackay or Bowen regarding the GBR as it is just too far away for day trips, unlike FNQ.

The point I was trying to get across is that the media like to release the info that will generate emotion, ie "our GBR" will be ruined.

But back to your original post. Abbott hasn't impressed so far.

Nah your on the money John. I can email an electronic copy to you but thermalben has the original as I was concerned that the slides would get damaged sitting around in a box in my shed so I gave him all the originals to be archived. All were taken on Kodachrome, that lost 20th century photographic medium. If/when Ben gets the private messages function up and running send me one with your email and I will send you a copy.
Or if you beg/bribe Ben hard enough he may be able to dig up the original for a higher quality reprint?

I'll work something out fellas. There's gotta be a slide scanner around here somewhere.

Cheers! It was interesting when I first heard that photo was originally on here. I was living OS at the time and was a wee bit concerned that my name was even identified at that particular spot. Innocent times! Great pic by the way...cool composition...& great timing!

I dunno why you would destroy the GBR?

The decision to let the car industry die is a huge strategic blunder that will leave our country vulnerable if a future conflict arises. It is in the national interest to keep a viable level of industry in times of war. Those foundries and machine shops that make engine blocks and cars also make tanks, planes and other national defence stuff. Or do we just hope America will save us?

I went to my kids school concert last night..looked around andI'd have to say at least 95% if not more of the cars there were not holden...lots were 4wd or famiy cars which require more thn 5 seats...IMO Holden have duded themselves by not manufacturing to the people's needs. Other than the Colorado(which is a ute) what 4wd/family cars have they made? People just don't want commo's etc any more..there is plenty of market there..seems their stategy/business management was the stuff up..You can't run a business relying on governments money....and why is our dollar so high? be good for everyone exporting to see that thing around 80-85cents!

To be fair to the the now government it was always going to happen, you cant have it both ways have high wages and a manufacturing industry and the idea of continually giving tax payers money to private companies is totally wrong especially when there not even viable business in todays climate.

It all comes down to Australia being to expensive to be competitive on a global scale, wages are to high but so are overheads like electricity, property, taxes?

Its just all about greed down the line somewhere? personally i think it starts with the banks in the pockets of the government.

BTW. I drive a holden.

If Labor had won the last election I wonder whether the Coalition would have politicised the issue and blamed Labor for the demise of the car industry? You bet they would have!

The fact is 24hrs after Holden said no decision had been made and Hockey dared them in parliament to leave they made their mind up. Up until this point I would have said Joe Hockey was the Coalition's best performer but this was not his finest moment.
And if economic circumstances changed in the medium term( like the dollar dropping) it may have become a viable industry again. Guess we will never know now.......

If Labor had won the last election I wonder whether the Coalition would have politicised the issue and blamed Labor for the demise of the car industry? You bet they would have!

The fact is 24hrs after Holden said no decision had been made and Hockey dared them in parliament to leave they made their mind up. Up until this point I would have said Joe Hockey was the Coalition's bYest performer but this was not his finest moment.
And if economic circumstances changed in the medium term( like the dollar dropping) it may have become a viable industry again. Guess we will never know now.......

Floyd, your post was ridiculous as usual.
The carbon tax was as ridiculous as your post. Spending billions on a tax that had no effect in actually reducing carbon .
Tasmania has the highest unemployment in Australia. I wonder why?
Both Mitsubishi and Ford made the decision to leave Australia under the Labour government. Every worker at Holden gets at least $50000 of their wage subsidised by the tax payer. The outrageous enterprise agreement the unions screwed Holden for is what killed the car industry. You can blame the job loses on union greed . All sanctioned by the Labour Party, looking after the worker.
The only reason the LNP abolished the debt ceiling is because the Labour Party, after racking up a debt of over 300 billion from a starting point of 20 billion in the bank,wouldn't agree to increasing it over 400 billion . Even thou their own estimates predicted the debt to reach well over 400 billion mid next year.
Grain corp is an Australian company ,why would we put Australian farmers interests in the hands of their competitors .
Foreign policy? Is letting in over 50 000 welfare sucking illegal immigrants good foreign policy?
Gonski? Blah blah blah.
You fail in basic intelligent reasoning you fool.It shows in every piece of shit you write in this forum.

Not to worry floyd, it won't be long, you'll get to vote again and someone else can winge about the new government or leader and all their broken promises.

Looks like all car manufacturing is set to end in Oz as of 2018 with a federal court ruling denying Toyota the ability to make adjustments to their AWA in order to save their operations, despite the majority of workers wishing to do so.

I don't get it. Toyotas AWA had not planned pay cuts and had even factored in wage rises of between 2.5 and 3.5% pa in exchange for more shift flexibility, reigning in overtime bonuses and reducing supplier costs. The unions blocked this and litigated in the federal court where it was upheld and the last man standing has now been forced to close.

Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Holdens decision to close I can assure you was made way before 'Hockey had goaded them into making an announcement'. Holden had lost nearly a billion dollars in the last decade building cars for a small, highly competitive domestic market and an export market saturated with better quality alternatives from Europe and Asia. Holden would have closed sooner if it wasn't for the fleet market and three tiers of government almost obliged to 'buy Australian'.

As for the NBN, c'mon, the original figures pushed were unrealistic from the beginning as was stated time and time again by the previous opposition. The figures were based on rapid and maximum uptake paying the highest premium price. Anybody with half a clue knew that wasn't going to happen.

I hate both sides of government in Oz, both constantly at war with each other in brinkmanship and one-upmanship, neither with a long time strategic view. Combine that with rapaciously greedy unions that would sooner see an industry fail than see their, for the most part unskilled workers, tighten their belts in uncertain times. Unions used to be about getting a fair shake for the worker, now their demands are so uncompromising and so unrealistic that many businesses just say fuck it and walk away and others wanting to invest in a stable democracy look elsewhere.

Excuse my rant.

If you don't have the dole, all the derros can turn to is crime for money. If you don't have a decent minimum wage, people go on the dole cause its easier.
So in my opinion, the dole and minimum wage are a necessary evil. Sucks that manufacturing may be off the cards for Australia, but there are new marketplaces emerging all the time so industries these days need to be dynamic to keep in business.

On the dole bit - so many people whinge about paying for it out of their income tax, but take a look at any country without a minimum wage and i'm happy to trade a few bucks out of my pay each week rather than to have to live with slums and high crime rates in countries that haven't provided welfare.

Good point yocal. US author David Simon spoke at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas about the problems with the divide of haves and have nots in America.
He basically argued that the reason the U.S was able to grow into the economic powerhouse it became in the first half of the20th century was because of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt's 'New Deal' which pulled America out of the Great Depression and created a consumer driven middle class which then spread throughout Western economies.
He worries that all that was achieved could be undone within a few decades due to the greed and apathy of a wealthy minority.
The question is are we following the US off the same cliff?
An extract of the speech appeared on the Guardian this week and drew over 2500 comments in a few days!
It's worth a read........

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx...

Top read Yorkey. It's the same 'inconvenient truth' for Capitalism that old mate made a movie about

don't excuse your rant Zen, its good you tell us what you really think. I saw a psychologist on the abc pointing out the modern phenomenon of people apologising for having an opinion because they don't want to seem antagonistic or negative. now people either apologise like zen or start sentences with 'In my opinion' or 'from my perspective' . fuck it tell us what you think, the alternative is encouraging the culture of spin and bullshit that is currently pervasive throughout government and media, exacerbated by the internet.

you make some good points Zen about Toyota, unions and the NBN, though I would disagree about Hockey having the opportunity to turn it all around. Like Barley you are correct in pointing out that Australians have moved on to better quality and more suitable euro and asian cars, while Holdem and Ford held onto the 1970s big car idea. It seems they were making cars to keep their V8 bogan race afloat rather than giving people what they want, because even the bogans are now turning up to the V8 race in Hyundais. I wonder what will happen to the race now? 4 cylinder pussbox race maybe? Cruze versus Camry, not sure that will work. to be fair apparently Holden were doing ok with the cruze, building a market, but looks like too little too late.

it is hard to defend government pumping more money into struggling car companies, but it is not that simple, there is no free trade really while others still have high tariffs and all Yorkesurfers points about it being an important base for training and establishing associated industries are correct. if we lose the skills to make cars we are not going to have a good skills base to do all the specialist machining and manufacturing that feeds the mining industry (our saviour) that is going to employ all these Holden workers. God knows how that will happen when Australians are already having difficulties getting into mining jobs for whatever reasons.

But apparently we don't have to worry about that either as new industries will replace the car industry, like all the clean power stuff that has already established itself overseas thanks to lack of support from a Howard government. looks like growth of these industries will be limited too under an abbott government scrapping any incentives.

so that leaves services industries, dont worry we are moving to a services economy, great services industries, excluding education what is that exactly? aged care, child care, hairdressers? well with gen Y there is certainly growing demand for people with skills in applying spray tan and plucking pubes, yeh that will save us. when there is no manufacturing don't worry we will have a workforce doing the roles of normal family duties and making ourselves look prettier, good skills right up there.

the most important point from Yorkesurfer is about defence, and having the ability to make stuff to defend ourselves, I cannot believe no-one in media raised this as a concern, too politically incorrect I suspect in the white middle class utopian view of the world. the whole world is not like Australia, actually Australia is the exception, while we become politically correct pube-less princesses, the rest of the world is becoming a more powerful and scary place, but we'll be right mate.

When I see that suburban lawnmower mechanics are hired to work unsupervised on D11s and 793s in their full body high-vis jumpsuits, climbing harness, safety boots, goggles, gloves and hardhats in 40degree heat I don't think the mining industry employers give a shit if fitters had a dealership background or not!

80% of the workers on mine sites are contractors anyway. The 20% that are the "vegies" don't get out from behind their computers or their airconditioned offices. I fthese guys want jobs in the industry, they need to be hired by the contractors.