"THE crisis now engulfing Australian manufacturing has been long predicted and much foreseen yet the inescapable impression is that our decision-makers have been taken by surprise and are scrambling to do something."

Every time the coalition has raised the issue of the 2 speed economy, the Labor government has tried to shout them down and claim that they are talking down the economy. I assume that this was help promote the myth that the carbon tax would have no effect on the manufacturing sector.

Once again Labor has proven to be more spin than substance.

Manufacturing started burning long before this government SM.

Otherwise the Howard Government and the current one would not have spent millions of tax payer's money subsidising the car industry, providing other incentives to manufacturing (mainly State Govts.) and bailing out failed ventures.

It happened because while we are a wealthy nation we expect cheap goods on the back of cheap labour (and greater profits) while our own manufacturing sector dies. In the long term that will be a failed policy along with unfettered free trade (not trade per se) and other negative impacts of globalisation.

Your statement that the ALP has ignored the two speed economy is blatantly untrue.

SM, as I have said infinitum the plan to wind down production in the First World has its genesis in the Lima Protocol of 1973. A document that even to the simpleton paints the picture of dismantling tariff barriers and dismantling manufacturing in the First World.

The Coalition was in government at the time but both sides of government unanimously agreed on the signing of the protocols presented by the UN, World Bank, and the IMF. All manufacturing stimulus since has been a stop gap measure to ensure we do not lose more manufacturing but there is no plan to START manufacturing again.

The left and the right sold us out, and all subsequent governments have continued the selloff.

I have no choice, it is not wise to challenge Shadow Ministers balance and understanding.
His defense team, equally ill equipped with both, unable to salvage any fairness will jump on me.
Hawk and Kieting, Howard, even when helping his brother out of trouble, a major manufacturer, knew, this country was up against it in manufacturing.
Our high dollar, our wages structure vs China/Japan and a host of others, cripples us.
Opposition , in power would not change Labors policy here.
But is subjecting this country to trade barriers by opposing Apple imports and its stand on olive oil is a threat to billions in trade.
Even yet a chance exists Labor can win!
Yes just maybe the Christopher Pyne like utterings of SM and those he blindly serves will Be seen for what it is.
A policy bag full of horse dung and nothing else.

"""
Our high dollar, our wages structure vs China/Japan and a host of others, cripples us.
"""

This isn't what cripples us. Government bureaucracy, red tape, taxes, rules, regulation, incompetent ignorance and socialism are killing us. Too many ticks feeding on carcass Australia, sucking the blood out of anyone who dares to have a go!

Get out there and start a business, run it for 5 years and then come back and tell us what's killing carcass Australia! You wouldn't have a f'n clue!

When I left Oz, just before Whitlam, the economy was brilliant. Single income families paying only 7.5% tax, & 3.75% [tax deductible] interest on their housing loan, were very comfortable. Companies were almost all profitable, & life was good.

When I came back the place was stuffed. Unlike most who lived through the changes, I had a before & after picture, which is much clearer.

Ridicules increases in the bureaucracy, & even more ridiculous wages rates he had given to them had made all the old business models redundant.

The private sector had huge wage rises, chasing the public servants, & for most manufacturing, & many other sectors, an employee could not earn enough to cover his increased costs.

Then I started living in the new era, & was even more horrified to find that even after the unsustainable wage rises, most average folk were no longer bringing home enough to survive on a single income. Bracket creep, [or jump with the huge wage increases] was chewing up much of the rises, & with rapidly increasing cost of living, life was difficult.

We tried different models, first importing components, & killing our suppliers, then importing the guts of a product, & wrapping a plastic & tin housing around it.

This avoided duty, & kept a little industry going, but reducing duties killed that. Once you can earn more money with your capital in the bank, than you can manufacturing "things" what does a sensible businessman do? Besides Whitlam's inflation had made real estate speculation the best game in town.

So Belly's right, bad as it is, this government has not done it all. You can sheet much of it home to two of them.

The arrogant idiot Whitlam, who got everything wrong, & the weak fool Fraser, who did not have the guts to reverse many of the Whitlam mistakes

"""
Ridicules increases in the bureaucracy, & even more ridiculous wages rates he had given to them had made all the old business models redundant.

The private sector had huge wage rises, chasing the public servants, & for most manufacturing, & many other sectors, an employee could not earn enough to cover his increased costs.
"""

and then

"""
The arrogant idiot Whitlam, who got everything wrong, & the weak fool Fraser, who did not have the guts to reverse many of the Whitlam mistakes
"""

And since then what have any of them done?
Make more ridiculous rules, increase bureaucracy, pay public servants more money, increase more regulatory rules on business to garner more of their fruits to create the justification for more of the above.

Carcass Australia is dying from all the poly-ticks stuck to her sucking her dry, and if anyone gets up with the Alcohol bottle or a cigarette lighter, watch out, the ticks will ravage you!

The reason people are always screaming for more money is, they keep asking for more of the above thinking it will make things better for them. They haven't yet realised that their cries for help are the very cries that are killing them! And ignorant people like belly go around denigrating anyone that tries to bring the truth to light!

cont...

For over thirty years I've watched peoples income shrink year after year as more rules and taxes to cover them are introduced, they're now so reliant on the state, they have no choice but to beg to the state for help.

Just witness how the state with it's despicable disciples such as belly perpetuate the reliance on it for their life being, with their (Lets get more of the plebs stuck to the states tit) carbon tax.

They're going to tax the air you breath and then make you grovel before them like a leper begging for food so you can have a little back. How long are we going to put up with this crap? Another 30 years? Or is it about time we started to fight back and take back control of our own destinies without having to demoralise ourselves every year by begging for some of our hard earned labour to be returned!

Then and only then will jobs and a fair pay come back to everyone!

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hear-that-boom-thats-australia-steeling-itself-for-good-times-20110823-1j88q.html
Sorry Shadow Minister.
Bit rude of me.
Just thought room existed to replace the fear mongering with some balanced comments.
Sorry, rare as it is in your threads out still is worth while letting truth out for a flight now and again.

Pelican,

"Your statement that the ALP has ignored the two speed economy is blatantly untrue."

Really! All I have heard is scripted statements saying how good things are in Aus and what a wonderful job labor did to save us from the GFC. Nary a word about how the retail and manufacturing sectors are struggling.

The answer is to make them more competitive, by reducing their cost of doing business. We should start by rolling back some of the ridiculous conditions in the fair work act that are driving up costs and driving down productivity, reduce payroll and other money grab taxes, and for god's sake not introduce a stupid industry wide carbon tax.

You should buy another paper Belly. That one is feeding you regular doses of cow dung, & you appear to be believing it.

Suggest to about 1000 families south of Woolongong that they'll be better flipping hamburgers, if anyone can afford then, at $15 an hour rather than $45 in the mill.

Then tell a similar number who will lose their well paying jobs in the small local coal mines supplying the mill the same story.

Be ready to run mate, they know who to blame.

Belly,

Listen to this from Graham Richardson, a long time Labor member and supporter. What he says does not differ from what I am saying much.

http://video.theaustralian.com.au/2105014241/Richo-on-the-Labor-Party

Perhaps the Labor party is headed the same way as the democrats after Juliar has ridden it into the ground.

I will say it again;
Manufacturing will return to Australia. It will not be a matter of
international treaties, IMFs, WTOs or any other alphabetical soup.

It will happen, and in fact it has already started, because the cost
of transport will put mass container shipping out of the reach of the
buyers of, at first bulky products and then gradually more compact and
expensive goods.

Here is the message from on high;
Globalisation is ending.

Suggested reading;
Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin.

Utube has a number of his talks on the subject.
Tight supplies of fuel especially bunker fuel is expected late this
year or in the next 12 months. Diesel/bunker fuel mix is available
but it is very expensive and ships are sailing at 14 knots instead of
25 knots. That puts the crewing costs up, but like the airlines they
are in the same crew cost/ fuel cost crunch.

The discussion in the future will be how do we manage the transition
from an import orientated industry to a high tech manufacturing
economy. Think of all those now retired electronics manufacturing
people that were put out to graze 25 years or so ago.
Who is going to train all the people needed to bootstrap up the new
industries. All those school leavers that only want computer jobs
will be in for a shock.

Watch this space.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2855568.html
A thought promoting link this one, so some will not read it.
But it gives a sound reason the opposition is using such themes, ignoring every issue that can not help its single agenda.
Bazz, mate, you must consider this,have faith in this generation.
They like us before them will jump every hurdle climb under every fence and, just as has been the case for 30 years, every manufacturing job lost will see two new ones, in other areas.

>They like us before them will jump every hurdle climb under every fence
>
Yes, indeed Belly, they will but not till we suffer a decrease in
living standards while we crank up everything. Still it will take some
years so it might not be too stress full.

Belly,

It was a good article, though a little naive for the following reasons:

1 If the carbon tax is passed, the attacks on it by the Coalition will not stop. Every cost of living increase will be used to beat labor, and the 2013 elections will be a rout.

2 There are constitutional road blocks to a double dissolution. Yes but there are ways around it. For example, The carbon price is a tax, and if any remnant is excluded from the budget, the carbon tax will be dead. The greens and labor can only block it by blocking supply.

SM,
Whoever wrote the first sentence of this thread has been asleep since 1970. I agree with Hasbeen the denise started with Whitlam and every government has carried on the same way. Three things the major parties have agreed on, high immigration, multiculturalism and the demise of Aussie manufacturing. All have been to our detriment.

The proposed carbon tax might be another nail in the coffin but all parties have endorsed the demise of manufacturing.

Labor has made many blunders so surely you can pick one out rather than make one up. Just wait a bit untill the carbon tax comes in and the NBN is up and running. Heres one for you, this government spent $20 million giving legal aid and advice to the illegal boat people this year and expects to spend $26 million next year.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/tony-abbott-trips-on-industry-protection/story-fn59noo3-1226124933653
This link, and this thread, in the case of the thread, some what flippantly.
Highlights assault on the very thing that took this country out in to the world.
Free trade.
It in a photo shows a man I regard as a hero, as hardly pressed by this issue, from all sides as the Prime Minister.
It reminds me, my union , my lifetime union, the AWU is again, facing massive job loss, in one of its workplaces a union now bearing the great name Australian Workers Union
I will not be loved for this, not concerned, rather proud conservatives will give me a kicking.
But my hero, one of three very truly great men of the recent past and long term, AWU I stand against ,and with Gillard on.
This debate should never be about mud to throw.
Not about jobs protection, we left that and became a trading nation.
We left behind too stagnation in workplaces and found a tool, Enterprise Bargaining, the saw productivity increases.
We always, find those saying our manufacturing industry is dieing,but we,this very country, has long ago and every day benefited from our drive to wards ending trade barriers.
Abbott? please! both wants and does not want them, my union, our best fights a battle here it can not win.
I commend the government for putting Australia first.

Unless Craig Emmerson is an economic dunce, he should be aware that there is a world of difference between Industry protection and protectionism.

If Abbott is guilty of hypocrisy then so is labor, with hundreds of millions of assistance to to the car and steel industries while preaching free trade.

The best we can do for the non mining sectors is to help them become competitive by removing costs and obstacles to their operations such as the productivity crippling fair work act and not implementing the carbon tax.

Shadow Minister it has got to a stage you and I should talk about my garden.
Planting in some soil is wasting time,nothing will grow there.
Over use of fertilizer can kill but rarely benefits the garden.
Just heaping it on is not gardening first plan.
Then dig.
Put all the ingredients needed for that intended plant.
Time to switch the subject, for 30 years, strangely, this may upset you, both party's have warned us we can not prop up Manufacturing.
I think any form of protectionism, including the car one is unwise.

But we can stop China saying in its purchasing contracts, they,not us, must supply steel or even the concrete railway sleepers we make so well.
You under stand, that will see higher prices for the Australian firms buying Australian?
Who pays them,to spend more here,us?
Do we tax Chinas product and risk the same on our every export.
Do you think reducing wages and conditions/living standards of workers is the answer?
We,this country, export our best industry's ,we did it with solar cells.
The answer there would have been tax breaks.
Jobs are not yet so bad we should panic.
We should debate do we want to be a trading nation or a insular one protecting jobs that can not produce comparative results.
Or should we not care, just flog dead horses using this problem to defame one side?

What has a carbon tax got to do with it, if it is introduced it won't come into effect until mid next year.
Manufacturing is in decline not only in AU, the USA & Britain is in the same boat.
Manufacturers can see the massive profits to be made by moving to China.
No matter what you suggest, it will not stop a decline.
When Chinese wages get to big for hungry manufactures they will go to Bangladesh or somewhere else.
As usual SM is talking sheet.

Manufacturing is in decline, but it is not dead. I am busy constructing a near $1bn manufacturing plant to produce for a niche product. This is still profitable, but with a rampant carbon price may not be in 20 years.

Keeping the cost of business low means more plants will be built to replace ones that close. Keeping costs high means that manufacturing declines faster or dies.

Shadow Minister you are one of a few project managers who post here.
Two with in 100klms from my home are still mates of mine.
You if you are in charge of purchasing and project costs will know.
It is more than difficult based on price to use much Australian steel rio bar is much cheaper so to most steel.
Concrete products are different bridge spans and planks can, however come from interstate.
They are mostly here at least now made by firms owned by construction ones.
So are trucked right past local made ones.
Manufacturing is not dead.
But never in our history had to contend with the dollar this high.
Reducing our floating dollar on purpose is insane.
Fighting for free trade while demanding special deals, for Apples steel, anything is ,well surly lets follow one set of rules.
My answers? reduce tax's for industry's like steel, so as to bring prices within reach of local construction.
Challenge in court contracts demanding over seas supply on our projects.
But we just must! confront this issue looking for the best out comes for Australia and our workers.
AG, after Gillard, your government will be confronted by this same problem.
We are in a poor state if every issue has to become a rag our party's fight over like a dog!
Our two biggest ex Australian firms commit to buy local even from very small manufacturing, but mass use of over seas steel is a concern

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/abbott-must-walk-away-from-economic-populism/story-e6frgd0x-1226125879103
This link interests me, my minds eye see one poster here trying to chew on a very big and hard stone in reading it.
Not from a paper or author I look to for balance.
Hardly a Labor drone,just the opposite in fact.
Is it related to a thread about Gillards recent meeting with this rags boss?
Or the impending opening of the British Parliament and the scrub fire about to start there?
Maybe it links to a internal review, run by the media giant it self starting soon.
It is my view all that may have played a roll.
But that it in fact is a glimpse , a lifting of one edge of a carpet so long needing a clean.
It is evidence my view Tony Abbott is as much, maybe more, a risk and a fake, as Julia Gillard.
I earnestly hope, dream, both Will be seen for the second grade leaders they are.
Hope we are looking at their backs long before an election.
Those who are not afraid of Abbott? should be he threatens Conservatism.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/liberals-threaten-tony-abbott-on-trade/story-e6freuzi-1226125968355
This mornings links, both of them, give me great heart.
Believe it or not, I understand politics is never going to have one side haveing all the answers.
I see the faults of my side and both fear them, and look for better.
I see too those on the other side, fear? far more than that! it terrorizes me, to see LIBERALISM dragged so far away from its own ground.
To see a Conservative leader use free trade free market forces as a club!
Unbelievable, breathtaking.
But spring is in the air.
Tony's yes no maybe, his lies, yes far more than Gillards even, are coming to roost.
Few will believe me, but both sides have contributed to our country's growth.
At times silliness from with in my side harms us.
Right now, Liberal/National policy's of attack before thinking, not thinking at all, thread subjects like this blindly telling us our gains should be put back 30 years?
Calm Belly, change is coming, one side gets a head start on the other by changing leaders then the other soon please soon.

Come now Shadow Minister!
This Shallow thread made assertions!
Ones that threaten the very basics of your party!
I offered here a rare element.
But one this country yearns for.
True debate on a subject.
Is your absence evidence you are uninterested in that?
Those links are of the greatest interest and offer hope.
To Conservatives more than any other group.
It says, Conservatives may well be returning from the dark place Tony Abbott and a lost few lead them.
You make the smallest pimple a mountain against Labor.
Here now, is your chance to at last, do what I always have.
Look deeply at the concerns others have,you should have, at your party's direction.
Here is a cross road what way would you recommend,or are you in hiding?

Labor is giving the Steel industry $100m to help adapt to protect future jobs. This protection. protectionism is raising import tariffs. For Labor to accuse Abbott of advocating protectionism is pure hypocrisy considering the promises they have made.

Abbott is not advocating protectionism, only methods of protecting manufacturing, which would involve reducing manufacturing costs.

My personal opinion is that I would remove as many barriers to profitability as possible, such as payroll tax, carbon tax, and restrictive labor laws and offer no subsidy.

I would however, welcome debate on the issue that an inquiry by the productivity commission would generate.

Shadow Minister, lets be honest, we all sledge here.
Some as in a shouted bar room brawl well in to the night.
Others with out even that drunken help get a word in.
But here you take a refined swing, we no longer play verbal tennis.
You have turned it to Cricket and taken on the persona of Geoffry Boycott and the Great Dr Grace.
Like him having been clean bowled first ball,you inform me others came here to see you bat, not me bowl.
My links are to your party's Journal The Australian.
From your heartland comes the very charge you lay at my party's door.
I think the answer is not in protectionism.
Not in grants to continue producing products that cost much more than imports.
I have no answers,ten years from now,what ever party is in power, without change, innovation, we will still be looking for them.

It seems that no one is listening.
I recently read an article about how hard it is for people to accept
as real something that is going to change their whole world ideas.

I will say it again;
Manufacturing will return to Australia. It will not be a matter of
international treaties, IMFs, WTOs or any other alphabetical soup.

It will happen, and in fact it has already started, because the cost
of transport will put mass container shipping out of the reach of the
buyers of, at first bulky products and then gradually more compact and
expensive goods.

Here is the message from on high;
Globalisation is ending.

Suggested reading;
Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin.

Utube has a number of his talks on the subject.
Tight supplies of fuel especially bunker fuel is expected late this
year or in the next 12 months. Diesel/bunker fuel mix is available
but it is very expensive and ships are sailing at 14 knots instead of
25 knots. That puts the crewing costs up, but like the airlines they
are in the same crew cost/ fuel cost crunch.

The discussion in the future will be how do we manage the transition
from an import orientated industry to a high tech manufacturing
economy. Think of all those now retired electronics manufacturing
people that were put out to graze 25 years or so ago.
Who is going to train all the people needed to bootstrap up the new
industries. All those school leavers that only want computer jobs
will be in for a shock.

Watch this space.

Belly,

For once I agree. The economic landscape is changing, and so in order to prevent the country from becoming a mining / service industry nation, there needs to be an all encompassing review of the conditions under which manufacturing is failing and what is needed to allow it to flourish. At this point no subject should be taboo, and everything should be on the table, including:

1 Taxes, payroll, council, carbon, etc.
2 infrastructure, transport, communications etc
3 Labour training sourcing, and legislation.

Yes we are on common ground SM we should start a thread I have ideas,.
Bazz sorry read all your thoughts here but not on board with the idea.
We started exporting to our only market Britain in sailing ships.
We opened our trade post frozen food and we grew.
Now evidence yet exists, that costs of transport from country's who pay so little will stop those country's exporting to us.
Remember,if you look honestly, Japan entered in to its war with us and the world, after its trade was threatened.
Look lets keep this thread rather than start another.
What are the answers to our not yet critical problems in manufacturing?
Are those problems all,new, or just the rising dollar.
I think the dollar is the biggest concern but the concerns we have have been evident for 30 years we can not compete with some prices in some areas.

So what do we do?
Lets look with honest eyes first, every government before Rudd from Hawk, believed in free trade, but supported selected industry's.
Labor put money in to car manufacturing and saw it wasted.;
Steel and clothing, do we still have a clothing industry? have found trouble a long time ago.
Are those screaming, from every side, aware of the BILLIONS lost by Blue scope?
Do we all understand the impacts of imposing restrictions on goods entering this country.
Would you,pay a 45% rise in the cost for your new home to use our country's steel? truly?
So what do we do, lets look at unemployment.
Hardly massive yet is it.
Are most aware Treasury and to some extent the bank fixing our interest rates like a figure about the current one?
Less, say 3% can lead to wage pressure.
If we look at new ways to support steel products/work we can save some of the industry.
These job losses are about that, an admission we can not export and compete with others.
But tax breaks and submissions to see our state and federal governments use our products IF they can be made near the prices.
Thoughts?

One of the factors that has never been considered by governments is
that employment has to cater for those that only want to go to work
in a factory and then go home at the end of the day.
They don't want to be a screen jockey, or salesman or servicemen and
will never have the ambition to rise to CEO of their employer.
However they must be catered for as they do contribute to society.

Belly, I know you don't believe what I am telling you, but it has already started.
Furniture and steel manufacture has returned to the US from China.
I was shopping for a lounge for my son recently and asked the salesman
if it was imported and his reply was no, we order from local makers.
He said they had almost no imported furniture.
Now that is a change to the way I remember it a few years ago.
Your comment on sailing ships is interesting but note that the
furniture industry was one of the first to be established in the colony.

Local manufacture will increase and the slow increase could be short
circuited by abandoning the WTO rules and reverting to temporary
tarrifs on imports.
It will not be easy but the transition is inevitable.

The financial problems in Europe and the US are a direct result of
the fall in GDP and the failure of OECD economies to increase growth.
Costs are rising with no increase in profits. All this is expected
and predicted as energy production is stagnant and energy costs are rising.