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The Forum > Article Comments > Regulatory attacks bringing a sad demise of the Australian economy > Comments

Regulatory attacks bringing a sad demise of the Australian economy : Comments

By Alan Moran, published 6/9/2019

The Australian economy has been flagging for many years now. Over the past year we actually saw a decline in GDP per capita and per hour worked.

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It's a greedy selfish world.
This story sounds like a parallel to the one I got over the back fence recently.
That was from a successful retiree from business, who whines on about how hard up they are living on the beach in a six bedroom mansion. The world is against them.

And I love the bit about the welfare drag on the economy.
Maybe we need to begin exterminating the drag factors.

And could I ask the author, do you have subsidised solar on your roof, paid for by the poor who are not so lucky to have a roof. There the ones living in cars, that's a good enough roof for the worthless.

Well all be rooned says Hanrahan...
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 6 September 2019 8:20:37 AM
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Come on Al...add your two bobs worth, I can't wait!

Dan.
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 6 September 2019 8:30:29 AM
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Government intervention. The root of all evil. Politicians are the cause of all the problems they claim that they can fix. But, "unproductive welfare". Since when was welfare supposed to be productive? Welfare is part and parcel of democratic, civilised societies; the only problem is that there are too many people on it who should not be on it - starting with too many useless immigrants and make-believe refugees, and people with sore backs or terminal acne posing as invalids.

Speaking of "mineral resources" being under-utilised: blame the idiotic fear of carbon dioxide for that. That fear is the current cause of most of our problems - massive electricity prices, no industry, no jobs. We are a spending society, not a saving (for investment) society, thanks to the dead hand of the reserve bank and interest rates not worth having. Why would anyone hang onto money that is not earning
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 6 September 2019 9:05:53 AM
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Government intervention. The root of all evil.
ttbn,
Yes but, mainly due to keep the hordes on the public payroll from disrupting the show even more than is being down thus far.
You know those on $150-400,000 salaries for simply climbing the career ladders with no actual positive achievement for those who are forced to hand over their Dollars.
Yep, great system if you are heartless & useless enough to exploit it !
Posted by individual, Friday, 6 September 2019 9:35:18 AM
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Government created and imposed regulations can and have impacted very negatively on the Australian economy! But nowhere more self-evident than on power supply! To the point where the cost of power, the highest in the world. became greater as a component of doing business or making stuff, more expensive than wages! Part of it was the asinine privatisation that

#1 Quarantined investment capital in monopolised and price gouging, tax-avoiding, profit repatriating, debt-laden, foreign investment!?

#2 Prevented this (foreign) capital from being invested in our increased productive capacity and innovation! Imagine, we were once the third-largest economy and a creditor one at that! And our country towns were inviting places where cooperation provided healthy returns for all who endeavoured.

We had vastly less division and acted as a unified nation with visionary Leaders and visionary projects that none of today's pollies would ever conceive or consider doable. Largely because timidity and self-interest/cronyism has replaced bipartisan pragmatism and cando thinking with never ever! And immovable, bloody-minded WON'T! TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 6 September 2019 10:24:38 AM
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Cont.
The government imposed and created regulation that harms our economy and entrepreneurial endeavour and investment the most is, the asinine absurd one that officially prohibits nuclear power! Not because nuclear power is inherently unsafe. but because in our political ranks there are a few who've risked their shirt on coal and gas investments and others who have risked a personal fortune on renewables.

If Nuclear power was problematic, why does it have the lowest death toll per gigawatts generated, even in comparison to much-vaunted renewables!

See Alan Goulding's Facebook page and a couple of shared, very short instructional videos, shared by Google tech talks and experts in their field!

And demonstrates where we should b headed and investing public money in, i.e., MSR thorium1 Because this has been successfully field trialled between the '50s and '70s by none other than the inventor and patent holder of the first operational reactor, Alvin Weinberg. Who was first among equals to understand we'd picked the wrong fork in the road to go down and invest in!

Thorium delivers everything that fusion promised but could never eve delivered but rejected because of the difficulty of weaponising.

Moreover, his technology can also be tasked with burning up the world's stockpile of nuclear waste and extracting the remaining 98% of recoverable energy in the process! And as a process, the other nations of the world would pay us annual billions for!

Given we provide a permanent storage solution/outcome! And given we do as proposed, reduce the half-life to just 300 years and produce a vastly less toxic material that may well be suitable as long life space batteries that burn up with reentry.

Furthermore, produce the lowest costing energy in the world with reactors that the rest of the world effectively pays for! And CARBON FREE energy to boot!

So, WTFing hell is wrong with our decision-makers!? SFB's?
Or conflicting personal interest/business allegiance?

Go figure! TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 6 September 2019 10:55:30 AM
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Cont.
MSR thorium would allow cost-effective desalination and moving water far enough inland in sufficient quantities to effectively drought-proof the nation and provide cost-effective broad-scale irrigation.

Deionisation dialysis desalination has already proven to be cost-effective for broad-scale irrigation and with conventional power! Imagine how much cheaper it could be if only our energy was the lowest costing in the world!

Consider these comparisons. A traditional light water reactor 350 MW, will require during an operational lifetime some 2551 tons of enriched uranium as fuel And from a product as scare as platinum. And produce as much as 2550 tons of highly toxic nuclear waste.

However a 350 MW MSR thorium a FUJI. Would only require for the same period, one ton of thorium, which is vastly less expensive and as common as lead, for which it would produce around 1 to 5% of waste. And from tried, tested and proven technology!

It's time to end the endless moronic prevarication and just get on with it.

As for needing huge time? And way out into the future?

The record shows that the quickest time to build and commission a nuclear reactor, was around six months, albeit, from a known and problem-free design!

And all that proposed here! As mass-produced, factory-built, FUJI 350 MW modules?

The world's lowest costing energy coupled to space-age automation will give us the world's lowest costing steel with the lowest possible carbon footprint!

Ditto aluminium and many other metal smelting operations, many of which could be placed near the deposits and salt repositories!? Given graphene highways and byways would make it more cost-effective to transmit the electricity to the mines and their adjacent refinery operations and then just transport the finished metal rather than ore!

Similarly, all our exports should be valued added, and doable with the world's lowest-cost energy coupled to space-age automation. We have a 2.5 trillion dollar super fund looking for a safe, tax-reducing repository!

And given the above, could leverage a further 2.5 trillion invest funds,, minus the foreign control that currently comes with it!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 6 September 2019 11:31:26 AM
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I suppose it's good to have an opinion like the author's which is contemptuous of government regulation, and can ignore the past examples, some very recent, such as the Global Financial Crisis caused by the dismemberment of government oversight in the U.S.A.financial system. Such myopia cannot recognize the necessity of government regulations which benefit the social as well as economic interests of a country. This dislike of regulation is abetted by a rear-view vision of the economy and our world. This world is constantly changing, every minute, every day. The windmills will never stop turning no matter how hard you try; Don Quixote discovered this fact. Perhaps the author should read what is often described as the 'best literary work ever written.'
Posted by Cyclone, Friday, 6 September 2019 12:21:44 PM
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Dear Cyclone,

Indeed.

And look at all that building regulations which are stymieing more apartment blocks to attract Chinese investors. Whatever could we do to combat such a regulatory assault?

And what about our high level fuel standards, these make cars so much more expensive.

"Australia ranks 66th in the world for its fuel quality, the lowest of all developed countries, with an allowable sulphur content up to 15 times higher than countries like China.

Australia’s most popular unleaded petrol – 91 unleaded – allows sulphur levels of up to 150 parts per million compared to the 10ppm allowed by the European Union, and the government has indicated this will not change until 2027.

This means some of the best and cleanest European cars cannot be exported to Australia, leaving some manufacturers to either export older generation engines on certain models, or to not export them at all."
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/02/eu-to-push-australia-to-clean-up-petrol-standards-as-part-of-free-trade-deal

Or about our poor strawberry growers who have to apply to the UN each year?

"About 70 per cent of Australian strawberries are being grown on runners that have been fumigated with an environmentally damaging pesticide that has been banned around the world.

Methyl bromide is an odourless and colourless gas which was banned under the United Nations Montreal Protocol in 1989 because it depletes the ozone layer.

Australia agreed to phase it out by 2005 but a decade later, nine strawberry runner growers at Toolangi, in Victoria's Yarra Valley, are still using nearly 30 tonnes a year."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-29/toxic-pesticide-used-on-australian-strawberries/6354488

In other words the author is full of it.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 6 September 2019 1:57:36 PM
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I was in Sydney a month ago. I live in the northeast United States and working for Apknite, this is not an area generally known for cheap real estate, particularly around major metropolitan areas like New York and Boston. But I was astounded at what I was being told was the price of real estate in the Sydney area. I had several people tell me that their adult children have essentially given up any hope of homeownership and their only opportunity is to be given the home their parents own.
Posted by b0rnthisway, Friday, 6 September 2019 7:44:37 PM
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An here is some clear evidence things are not as rosy as the government would have us believe:-

“Today’s figures show the worst annual economic growth for 18 years. GDP per capita is now lower than it was a year ago, productivity is plunging and the economy is pretty much staying above water purely because of government spending and a drop in imports due to weak investment and household spending.

We have now had four consecutive quarters of trend growth below 0.5% – that hasn’t happened since the 1990s recession nearly 30 years ago.

If we include public investment, government spending overall accounted for nearly 70% of the growth in the economy in the past year – a figure not far below that which occurred during the GFC.

If we take out government spending and investment, and also trade, the private sector shrank 0.5% over the past year. That only happens when the economy is pretty much in the toilet.”

Pretty scary when you think about it.
Galen
Posted by Galen, Saturday, 7 September 2019 12:46:20 AM
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Thanks Al.

If only we the democracy suckers, could elect people with a vision like you.
And I don't wish to be insulting at all, by comparing your vision to that of a long lost visionary, Barry Jones, that polymath who's flaming visionary light was extinguished very quickly as an MP.

The sign of a desperate democracy, is one where the total rule of its people is governed by an army of sycophants at the top. That is Australia. A self serving nightmare for half the hapless population, factored out of any meaningful existence, who can go root their boot, while they watch the examples of total disregard of their simple demands, such as an affordable roof over their head, while the politicians at the top, nail in the injustice by refusing to deal with it as a hedge to the secure little number it is, guarding their own mulitiple housing portfolios, and ensuring an army of rent slaves for themselves.

This is self serving at its worst! It has robbed the country of aspiration.
The same group of "terrorists at the top", further prop up the building of a failed economy, by artificially escalating a property bubble, and brand name it as market force driven, with many more immigrants than can be reasonably sustained, and manipulated interest rates designed for bank profits.

Along the same path, tertiary education credentials are devalued to that of a corn flakes packet, with valueless Micky Mouse curriculums and a team of used car salesmen at its helm, attached by another self serving umbilical chord directly to the politicians bed room.

Who says it like it is, but those who lose by it? Talk around for the economic realities of a failed economy and a divide and rule establishment order for a dose of reality

As I see it, China waits patiently on the side lines for this alcoholic look alike country, to hit the skids.

Dan
Posted by diver dan, Saturday, 7 September 2019 8:50:50 AM
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We have a government who as an idiotic ideological imperative, need to privatise everything former generations built and paid for!

Chanting as they do so, the government has no business in business. And just wrong.

They critique socialism and communism but have their hands out for financial and defence assistance from, vastly better managed, tiny resource-poor, socialist Singapore. Are like chooks running around with their heads lopped off trying to conjure up trade deals with communist, human rights-abusing, totalitarian China.

I am old enough to remember when one wage was enough to buy a home, support a family of four or more, pay for a serviceable motor vehicle and feed clothe and educate the kids. Plus pay for an annual holiday. At a time when we were the third wealthiest nation on the globe, a creditor one at that!

We've come a long way since then and solely as a direct consequence of government intervention, rules/regulations!

The first being the gradual, progressive erosion of personal freedoms the second being a huge cohort of homeless folk/unaffordable housing.

A nation now 66th in the world? Hopelessly mired in debt, with most of our co-ops dismantled as a consequence of government actions, intervention/evocation.

We've certainly come a long way! Most of it for most folk, being all downhill, their centuries-long, enterprise/endeavour squandered by fiscal illiterates, to shore up political outcomes/personal power!

Our personal wealth is illusionary, the product of quite massive debt! Mining booms, both squandered for base political reasons/objectives!

Co-ops stood almost alone as the only free market, private enterprise, business model, to survive the great depression largely intact! Progressively dismantled at the altar of idiotic, ideological imperative!

We need to reembrace cooperative capitalism as new government-funded/facilitated co-ops. Some could be power providers other water reticulators, using deionisation dialysis desalination to provide ost effective, potable water on demand.

Other could be credit unions/housing co-ops. Time to put this nation back on a forward foot! Just get on with what every boy and his dog knows needs to happen!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 7 September 2019 11:07:20 AM
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Thanks, Dan and rare praise indeed. None of my hats will fit now!

That said, I'm not advocating government investment in anything but our people, and their better ideas and innovation. And in the form of competing co-ops that compete for your dollar.

And as government-funded and facilitated co-ops, beat the pants off of all other private enterprise and any public corporatised model!

And in projects that have to earn their keep/repay the investment capital!

As indicated, Australian owned and operated co-ops that allow us to more than compete for business on the global market.

Imagine once agin building cars here! As electric vehicles with Austrailian made batteries powering them and other vehicles! f the energy componentis cheap enough and the workforce is an owner operator co-op. we keep all the money we make right here as well as the total tax liability, for an enterprise that beats the pants off the competition and yet pays the best hourly rate replete with the best and safest working conditions!

And without any union involvement! They would incorporate a criche and a housing co-op and possibly a shool and hospital for the self employed employees/owner operators.

And the only way we are ever going to reestablish ourselves as a manufacturing economy that can take on and beat the world every which way all while massivel turbocharging the economy.

And one that always sells more to the world than it buys, and done that finally stops us massively bleeding consumption capital to the rest of the world, and one that becomes so productive that we needs must start inviting guest labour.

For the skill sets, we don't have/can't train here. Only requirement being, they train at least two apprentices or cadets during their term.

At least half their total salary withheld and paid to them as a lump sum back in their homeland unless a dozen or more Australians, neighbours, friends, sponsored them, requested they be allowed to stay.

In which case they would have adopted all our social customs and have been thoroughly assimilated model citizens.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 7 September 2019 4:09:11 PM
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Alan B,
And you're still opposed to a National Service ?
Posted by individual, Sunday, 8 September 2019 9:08:34 AM
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I don't believe I ever said I was opposed to national service, in fact, I believe the record show, I've advocated national service (compulsory) for long term unemployed (6 months or longer)

That said we can stimulate a tanking economy with short term sugar hits like tax relief that is reinvested in additional productive capacity or as a rise in pensions. Pensions are spent, put straight back into the economy as increased demand.

Increased demand takes goods from retailers shelves, which in turn create reorders from wholesalers, who need to replace their inventory from the factory here or overseas.

If it's replaced from overseas, it doesn't do much for our economy, but plenty for theirs!

We can support folk with the dole, work for the dole schemes or just create full-time work.

Creating full-time work is too easy as government-funded/facilitated co-ops that produce or process something. Given they do that profitably, say as power, water provision, manufacturing electric vehicles, Australian Lithium-ion batteries, we will reinvigorate the economy/niche market exports.

And indeed, our own economic miracle.

Part of that economic miracle has to include the progressive roll-out of Graphene highways/byways. Why? Because graphene is the strongest material on earth! A superconductor that will allow roads that don't crack or pothole/ bridges/infrastructure that stands without much maintenance for centuries.

Moreover, replace aging and increasingly vulnerable transmission towers, plus eliminate most of the current transmission and distribution losses, (around 75% combined) increase the profitability fourfold as the first consequence from the world's cheapest electricity!

Or further reduce electricity costs by similar margins, given we create intended private enterprise competition, i.e., employee-owned/operated co-ops, competing for the consumers' dollar.

This would ensure the most efficient most capably lead would win and progress as others didn't. Given comparative benchmarking, those qualities could be instilled in other professionally mentored co-ops.

We really have no other real choice if we would put this nation back to work. The drones/users/leaners exposed in this exercise could be offered paid migration anywhere else on earth!

TBC Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 8 September 2019 11:20:38 AM
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We've had so much alleged reform of our tax collection methodology, that it's arguably the most complex on earth with more holes than Swiss cheese!

We can't ever fix it! Therefore it has to be completely jettisoned in favour of some comprehensible, sane, new arrangements!

Those new arrangements would and could do two tasks, reinvigorate the economy/wealth creation/jobs!

And as a 15% flat tax on every dollar earned by anyone here in this country. Every dollar of gross profit would be levied by 15 cents! And collected via the banking industry as a compulsory 15% transaction tax. And the best way, given it could all be done electronically as a direct transfer overnight to the ATO/consolidated revenue.

This would eliminate all reconciliation and compliance costs, meaning the 7% averaged, as these ancillary costs could be returned to the business bottom line.

Farms and rural enterprise could still average their income over 7 years. And treated in completely separate arrangements

GST could also be eliminated in the process! And given we did as proposed, lift revenue by as much as 60+bilions per!? The result would be an effective 8% tax in real terms given the return of all compliance and reconciliation costs, plus the end for all time of ubiquitous and economy harming bracket creep!

They'd be battering the door down to get in and relocate their business operations here! [Or retirement options.]

Even if that required businesses to accept (40-50%) Australian partners. Say employee-owned and operated co-ops? TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 8 September 2019 11:46:54 AM
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And as a 15% flat tax on every dollar earned by anyone here in this country.
Alan B,
Now you're talking ! Get rid of Commercial Welfare at the same stroke of the pen !
Put a ceiling of ten (10) times the minimum wage for Govt salaries !
Australia's Economy would be A1 in no time at all !
Posted by individual, Sunday, 8 September 2019 12:05:14 PM
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Around 30% of the workforce are public servants! While w need those a the coalface, nurses, ambos, firies and the police we just don't need an army of double handling, middlemen, bureaucrats! We're with one exception the most over-governed country on the planet and have one country governed by what? Seven or eight competing governments.

And as three tiers of often over-regulated obstructionist government more concerned with their own survival than the country or the citizenry they allegedly serve!?

If we eliminated the roadblock middle tier, we'd lose nothing real except incompetence and corruption?

What we'd gain would be 70 addition annual billions in save revenue and a pool of money that could be repurposed for nation-building and wealth creation projects/self-sufficiency! Social housing etc!

And end forever any current opportunity by either federal or state government to duck shove ineptitude or incompetence etc-etc!.

None of what I've proposed in any part of my commentary will be possible or ever get done by the current crop of gormless, useless, self-serving pollies all of who will have to be removed if we would save this nation and keep it for we Australians.

Let alone rescue it as a vibrant forward-looking robust economy and a unified nation!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 8 September 2019 12:10:53 PM
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individual,

Talking of government salaries. I read last night that Governor of the RBA gets over $2 million p.a. to drive down the interest rates to zero, and even minus. .

Yes. Minus is possible, and it is happening in Denmark, where it costs you money to keep money in a bank account, and people with mortgages are being paid to have them.

And, a Sydney Morning Herald scribbler says the Governor as 'progressive'.
Posted by ttbn, Sunday, 8 September 2019 12:44:39 PM
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The many bureaucrats on over $300,000, Uni Chancellors on an average of $1 million, CEO's on millions, Welfare recipients & Refugees on more than those on minimum wages, all add up to be unaffordable to the rest of us hence our competitiveness is out the window.
Our Unions have gone from being there for the blue collar worker to crapping on him.
Education has been so watered down that it is now acceptable to be insipid, in fact, it's the norm now ! We need to get practical, logical thinkers back into Authority, the dreamy Academic types have all but ruined this once great Nation ! We need to pull the plug & drain that swamp !
Posted by individual, Monday, 9 September 2019 7:23:42 AM
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