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The Forum > Article Comments > Holden job spin hits the skids > Comments

Holden job spin hits the skids : Comments

By Malcolm King, published 3/12/2019

Holden and the South Australian government have been doing burn-outs with the truth, as their dodgy claim that 80 per cent of former Elizabeth plant workers have found secure jobs, blows a head gasket.

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This bloke seems to exist only to rubbish South Australia.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 8:26:53 AM
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My recollection is that with the former Chrysler and Mitsubishi plant a third of workers got new jobs elsewhere, a third went casual and a third remained unemployed. Good to see a Valiant being driven in the new series of the TV show Fat Pizza.

Compounding the lack of truthiness about Holden workers is the new hydrogen plant at Tonsley Park. The idea is that renewable energy (SA is actually 51% gas powered) will be used to electrolyse water and a few percent hydrogen will be add to the gas grid. It would be far more efficient to charge the batteries of electric cars and not waste most of the energy on hydrogen.

Perhaps GM could one day make cars again at Tonsley but this time EVs. I'm from SA originally and I think the state has a massive sense of entitlement.
Posted by Taswegian, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 9:26:18 AM
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Taswegian,

So glad you left.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 10:22:07 AM
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Did anyone really expect anything different to these findings.

One of the main reasons for failure of the car industry in Australia was the fact that the manufacturers paid their workforce over twice what a process worker could earn for the company.

Of course it wasn't just the car industry. With the advent of cheap container shipping for white goods & hardware, & roll roll off shipping for cars, our industries were opened up to foreign competition. Our ridiculously high labor costs for semi skilled workers meant our industry was doomed.

These wage rates flowed on into everything thus we have very expensive building costs, & extremely high housing prices, & a bureaucracy over paid by a factor more like 300%.

You have to feel sorry for the ex factory workers now living with these high costs, but unable to generate enough profit for an employer to be employable at wage rates required to live with our high costs.

There is going to be a hell of a lot of pain before we get out of this high cost trap we have got our selves into.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 10:53:50 AM
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Hasbeen,

Good summing up. Everything, including wages, is too expensive in Australia.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 11:21:04 AM
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Taswegian,
When the EVs are there, no doubt their batteries will be chargehed. And no doubt there will be a large fleet of EVs here soon (though GM certainly doesn't want to make them here). But the EVs are not there yet. And by the time they are, SA will be generating a lot more electricity from renewables. We need to ensure there's a use for the electricity we generate. A new connection to NSW will do that for a while, but it's not a permanent solution.

It's a bit misleading to claim SA's 51% gas powered, as the amount of electricity generated from renewables in SA exceeds half of the electricity SA uses (the difference being due to exports to Victoria). By the end of next year, SA's electricity will be 100% renewable sourced a lot of the time. And when it isn't, the electrolyser can be switched off.

Every state in Australia has a massive sense of entitlement. But SA has much more trouble getting what it's entitled to than the eastern states do.
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 11:34:12 AM
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