Judy
I don't know much you've kept up with the debate but basically it was time the car industry went. This business about whether the government should pay to keep jobs in Aus has been kicked around endlessly over the years, and always the answer is that we get more jobs if the subsidies end. Admittedly there will be short term losers, but overall resources that would have gone into loss making enterprises like the car industry will be freed up for more productive use elsewhere in the economy. Better economy. More jobs.

One of the key points in the current debate is that the community seems to have come to a resigned acceptance of this argument (although there are a few diehards) and that the car industry should go. Its a shame but we never had a comparative advantage in that 20th century industry. It was a 50s thing started by Menzies (one of the conservatives you so despise). The debate has moved on.

Judy, it's not just quite grossly over-rewarded Tories, who think within a fixed or very limited circle of Ideas, but most politicians, I believe, whose main game is to win reelection, occupy the treasury benches, duck shove responsibility, blame shift, and steal ideas and kudos and shout down, belittle the other side?
Have I missed anything? And is not all the above common to most corporate psychopaths?
Thinking within a limited or tiny circle of very limited ideas, always limits the questions, and when the questions are limited, so also are the answers or available options!
Thus we see duck shovers, mouthing monosyllabic mantras, like the govt has no business in business, when in fact, it would be far more accurate and appropriate to say, the incompetent have no business in business!
Rhrosty.

The entire problem is politicians, with very short sighted tunnel vision and no ideas!
The car industry, could be fixed in a fortnight, just by reallocating money we currently waste on welfare for the rich, around 26 billion per?
And using just a portion of those funds, create an employee controlled co-op.
Thus we'd retain the skills and skilled workers, who could then be tasked with building right hand drive electric vehicles, we could export to niche markets in Asia.
Five vehicles could share a common chassis and drive systems, a saloon, a ute, a coupe, a hard top convertible and a station wagon?
Given we invented it, the power plant could be a much lighter compressed gas powered ceramic fuel cell, which even at a cost of five grand per unit, is vastly less than a half a ton of lithium ion batteries, or a complete conventional engine.
Moreover, the exhaust product is mostly water vapor and the energy coefficient is up to 80%, which is at least four times better than some fossil fueled vehicles, meaning economy and range is four or more times better.
And there's no power train to wear out and little or no maintenance with an electric vehicle.
The only current problem is range and or recharging; whereas, an NG/methane powered variant has no such problems. And if we smart, we will always have methane and or, solar created hydrogen!?
A couple of Aussie (CSIRO) invented high capacity capacitors would suffice to store returned energy, via regenerative braking and so on, and indeed, massively increase the already impressive electric vehicle torque.
A co-op, could be run much leaner than a vastly over leveraged corporation, carrying hugely over rewarded drones and non performing dividend collectors? There'd be no strikes or wages blowouts and no carried drones in a co-op!
Meaning, with already existing automation, and the new economies of scale we'd gain by supplying Asian and other nearby markets, we could compete for market share, with anyone!
The debate has moved on indeed! Bah humbug!
Rhrosty

As soon as I hear anyone describing the liberals as the Tories, then it is a sure bet that the person is disconnected from reality and hails from the extreme left of politics. Judy Crozier is exactly that, and in her universe all Labor's stuff ups are simply misrepresentations, union corruption is a figment of our imagination, and the coalition's plans are to return our children to the work houses.

Judy teaches creative writing and delights us all with fantasy articles such as "How Rudd’s pink batts saved Australia."

Need I say more?

Great article. And timely too. I've been wondering about this myself. In Australia we no longer seem to have many articulate voices on either side of politics. The left of centre have been silent or blustering for quite a while.

What concerns me is the number of otherwise reasonable people who take on board the most outrageous statements not based on any facts at all. The wages 'blow-out' being one of them and the demonizing of unions. It is quite bizarre. Unions are needed now more than ever.

There are private companies who make their money providing services paid for by the tax payer and/or subsidized by the tax payers. If only a fraction of how these companies squeeze their workers and double dip in the tax money pot were known, people wouldn't be so enamored about the 'efficiency' of private enterprise.

To view the world via the left/right paradigm is very naïve. Bankers run West because they create all the new money for our Govts to function and you to buy a house or car. Nothing will change unless we move back to Govt banks.http://cecaust.com.au/

Tony Abbott now tells us that the Govt Debt is $667 billion or more than twice Labor's numbers. This is over $60,000 debt for every working person or and extra $120,000 added to every family's mortgage. Now OS Central banks created most of this money from nothing. Why don't we create our own credit via Govt banks?

Note Israel has just closed all 103 embassies world wide and allotted an extra $3 billion for war.Many believe that they are preparing to attack Iran. This will be a disaster for all of us.

"How Rudd’s pink batts saved Australia"

This author wrote that!?

What a disgrace. The mentality [sic] of the left is a atrocious.

I've been saying much the same thing the author has for a while - especially on OLO.

However, I disagree that this is a Tory thing. The relentless assault on worker rights is a 100% bipartisan phenomenon - as the 'centre' for all political parties moves further and further right. It's also taking place in much the same toxic manner throughout all Western nations.

The process has been operating under the Western media radar for about 30 years, but has accelerated significantly over the last 5-10 years.

The media's role is not only to amplify the propaganda that 'we can no longer afford' to protect worker rights or to maintain a social welfare system, but to also distract us from seeing how those rights and social protections are being dismantled.

People on the supposed left have been conditioned to get passionately upset about an environmental threat somewhere or a human rights abuse in some faraway country. However, careful non-reporting or under-reporting of the continual assaults on our worker rights and welfare system ensure that we have little to nothing to react to. Witness the complete lack of response to the Treasurer's recent announcement that raising the retirement age to 70 is virtually a 'given' in the May budget or the complete non-debate surrounding the groundswell of zero-contract labour and unpaid internships.

Judy
Your comments reek of objectivity, how dare you claim such a right. From where I sit on the fence I suspect you may well be of the right persuasion. There are others who also make this claim and they know beyond all dispute that if anybody makes comment with which they fail to agree or indeed even understand, such a commenter must be left.

Its a bit ironic that much of Australia's current economic and social mess can be traced back to the Hawke\Keating regime which de-regulated and dismantled Australia's economic safeguards.

Those amongst us who believe they are right might well have voted for H+K had they known that they were actually right when many naively believed they were left.
Den 71

Killarney,
great to find others start to see the game that's played and how our government acts entirely in the interests of big business - deflecting, distracting. and duping its populace to comply with one theft after another.

For 30 years, a deliberate campaign has been conducted to dismantle the foundations of a decent society, to erode hard fought for gains, to sell every public asset, to remove every legal impediment to oligopolies, to eviscerate unions, prohibit strikes and protests. Where ever you look from welfare, to education, from workers rights to small business rights the entire country has been surrendered to oligopolies.

We forget that we agreed to this movement initially because there would be this trickle down economic dividend - but that never eventuated. The economic rationalist solution to our 1970s stagnation has now revealed itself to be fraudulent - built entirely on debt and increasing inflation the system is broken. But for the hi tech boom we would have arrived at this impasse much sooner.

The mega Corporate version of capitalism, the current global hegemony has arrived at a dead end. The vibrancy of capitalism comes from innovative, small businesses who grow as older big businesses fail and disappear. But in this current hegemony the mega corporates prevent entry in entire fields of business and the few who successfully avoid their border control are simply purchased absorbed or bullied into submission.

All the while, what passes as progressive or resistance is absorbed with random victims, identity politics, never ending arguments about racism, sexism, violence to women. Indeed anything and everything to divide and distract.

Yebiga

That about sums it up. Unfortunately the Australian people appear to be caught up in the same web of ignorance, hypocrisy and obedience so well described by Julian Ninio in his telling book about the American empire. Thankyou for taking the trouble to comment.
Den71

From what we know of Lefties and what we have seen of their current activities, the aim is the creation of a pool of unemployables or people in insecure employment, who are not protected by work. As they will be easy to please, these "Elites" from their Ivory Towers will create a vast sea of expendable foot soldiers for their political ambitions.

Bosses and workers are on the same side, it is only the "Elites" and other parasites who benefit from un/under employment.

Its informative to note that this thread has attracted merely 12 replies, when threads of infinitely less significance but with emotive appeal like racism will attract hundreds of responders and multiple threads. In a globalised economy subjects like racism are essentially anarchronistic except for politically exploitative purposes.

YEBIGA,

When a wannabe journalist posts tired and outdated talking points from the Labor talk sheet, the failure to generate interest is not surprising.

Yebiga

'... identity politics, never ending arguments about racism, sexism, violence to women. Indeed anything and everything to divide and distract.'

And do you notice that however much raging debate surrounds these issues, they have barely advanced at all in 30 years?

The media smoke-and-mirrors trick is to keep continual 'progressive' controversy and debate alive in order to feed people's sense of righteousness, while very little real 'progress' ever gets achieved. Most of the advances took place in the 60s and 70s. Since then, any 'progress' has been cosmetic.

At the same time, the people's right to employment, worker rights, a healthy welfare system and to affordable education, healthcare and housing have been absorbed into faux media concern about our 'ageing population', 'global competitiveness', 'declining literacy standards' yada yada ...