SOG>>*we have no manufacturing bases left*<<
Yabby:>>Some people repeat this rubbish over and over and its simply not correct. What would you like to buy, Sonofgloin?<<

Well Yabby, right on the rhetoric again, this from the ABS IN 2009.

"The Australian economy is dominated by its service sector, representing 68% of Australian GDP. The agricultural and mining sectors (10% of GDP combined) account for 57% of the nation's exports."

Do you understand what is being said here Yabby:

68% of our GDP comes from flipping burgers
10% of our GDP comes from growing and digging
22% of our GDP comes from things we make

Given that mining at 10% of GDP is 60% of our exports we can safely say that manufactured and exported goods are around 10% of GDP.

This leaves locally produced products for domestic sale at about 10% of GDP and if we did not have a car industry that pumped out products with an asp of $40k we would be producing 5% of GDP to sustain our internal market needs.

Yabby you trot out the big ticket items that we still produce as a validation of our strong manufacturing segment, that is a rubbish argument. The clothes, shoes, toys, and nearly every other item under every Xmas tree in Australia two days ago came from overseas, deny that.

There are only twenty million of us and we have been experiencing the biggest mining boom in our history and yet we are in hock, as I said household savings are at 2%, down from 18% thirty years ago, they are selling or have sold off all our utilities, they are selling our water rights to big business and you as a peasant should understand the implications of that Yabby.

*68% of our GDP comes from flipping burgers*

Err, not just flipping burgers, Sonofgloin.
Services include health, education, retail, tourism, hospitality,
administration, banking, telecommunication etc.
A huge and vital part of our economy. Health and education alone
are enormous.

*The clothes, shoes, toys, and nearly every other item under every Xmas tree*

Do you know what their value is, at the point of import, Sonofgloin?
Peanuts. Far more value is added from port to consumer, then
it ever cost to make these things. A tshirt is worth 4 bucks.
A pair of shoes 5-6 bucks. Most of that consumer dollar stays
right here, paid in rents, wages, taxes, transport etc.

All that cheap China stuff you think, yet it still only makes up
for 18% or so of our imports.

Where are our big money imports? Petroleum, drugs, machinery,
cars. Petroleum is by far the biggest, IIRC

*There are only twenty million of us and we have been experiencing the biggest mining boom in our history and yet we are in hock*

For how long has this mining boom been going on, Sonofgloin?
Its quite recent actually.

*they are selling or have sold off all our utilities, they are selling our water rights to big business*

Not so in WA, Sonofgloin. Water and power both Govt owned. Mind you,
I do think our state is better managed then NSW or Qld.

SOG:

You appear to be stunningly ignorant in your knowledge of the history of this country and what refugees had to put up with when they came as part of The Displaced Persons Scheme, established in 1947 between the Australian Government and the International Refugee Organisation, which saw 170,000 displaced people arrive in Australia between 1947 and 1951. They were not exactly welcomed with open arms. Times were tough for them, very tough. But I won't go into the details, I'll simply suggest that you do a bit of research on the topic. I did have siblings who perished. They died of starvation and illness and it wasn't only the Red Cross who helped but the International Refugee Organisation as well.

SOG:

cont'd ...

My attitude is not "I'm allright Jack," as you imply. That's your reality not mine. I never take anything fro granted, never have, never will. That's not my ethos. And as I've written in the past:

"I have wept in the night
For the shortness of sight
That to somebody's need made me blind
But I have never yet
Felt a tinge of regret
For being a little too kind!"

Lexi I notice that you just disregard the factual stuff I mentioned about Australia being a land of opportunity if you were a hard worker and slightly intelligent back in the day compared to now. You choose to run with the ever popular "we were discriminated against, we worked for everything we have, and no one gave us anything."

Well Lexi what Australia did give your folks and you is a stable political platform that guarantees tenure of your rights.

A surety of the right to possession along with a police force employed to protect that right.

You got a judicial system that meant that they could not lock you up without a hearing before a Magistrate and in a timely manner.

You got a governed wage system that protected you against exploitation.

You got a school in your neighborhood and a hospital in your district.

You got water gas sewage and electricity in the dwelling.

What is your expectation of what your new country can do for you?

I have no empathy for your "embattled post WWII emigrant" bleating. If you had emigrated 150 years before that then I would say you did it tough but post war Australia was better than post war Europe and given the obvious individual success of migrant groups in Australia I don’t think they were disadvantaged for too long or too hard as you are suggesting. Now the Nazi and the Fascist knew how to discriminate and that is why your folks came to this god forsaken land, I am glad they came but I have doubts about you.

Lexi
I have been eyeing off this thread for a while; its time for a history lesson. You may have PTSD from life in a war zone in Europe post 1945, if so I genuinely sympathise with you. What you must remember is Australians sacrificed themselves in huge numbers to overthrow dictator regimes throughout Europe (Mussolini being one notable contender) in order to save Europe from itself. But that truth is but the half of it. While war in Europe raged, Australia had a second front of its own closer to home. A life and death struggle for the survival of Australia and its way of life fought against an invading army from Japan. Here a big tick to the Americans, without which we would be flying a very different flag.

It was galling to say the least for our returned servicemen and their families to witness the influx of foreigners from Europe given a free pass to our country who we had recently bombed the crap out of as the enemy. An unhappy situation compounded by the compliance of the same foreigners to lower wages and scoop up scarce resources, in particular housing, Australians considered they had the rights to exclusively at that time. I know this since I lived in a typical returned serviceman’s household in that era.

It is true what you say, at the time immigrants were not popular and in the most part were not welcome, but that confliction was not the view of our Government who considered this country needed workers at any cost as development fodder. Nothing changes, the same cry rings true today as a cry for skilled overseas workers at any cost again rings out and Universities pander to the money offering tuition and Citizenship to foreign students as a reward for their money. Australian kids do without meaningful university education and go begging as a consequence of inflated tuition fees and plain unaffordability and are rated number two to wealthy foreigners. You may now add xenophobic to homophobic if you wish to describe the above as an attitude.