rehctub - Quote "As for China, those days are numbered, as their youth, tomorrow's workers, want what we have, and that will put huge pressure on China itself."

I don't know where you got that but a lot of Chinese young do have a lot of what we have, there is upward pressure on wages but not enough to get anywhere near closing the gap between Chinese and Australian wages. In the Australian wages we need to include many other charges compulsory superannuation, insurance, gov red tape, work place environment, the building etc.

If wages go up too much business will move to India.

half the living costs=rent!
so govt must stop giving tax breaks..
for clever folks who make renters payoff..their cashcow..

any aid..giving by govt to...'investers'..buying up every cheap
would be better spent..on therenter bying back their squat

china works..cause most dont pay rent
cause most still..have farms..and because farmers cant get dole

so lets stop giving miners 12 billion fuel subsidy
[only to have computers drive their subsidized truck's]..and give a job back to the driver..

after all the driver..pays fuel tax..
plus by 2015..c02 tax on top..plus gst..
govt must only give aid..to the poor/individual's..

not the corp-oration...person
nor the loud persistant..collusive lobby
nor trust's..nor/incorporated/limited liability..quango'$

especially..not any..in tax free havens..
washing clean the rent and tax refunds/grants/bailouts..reaped in from govt..squeaky wheel..largess

let the rich..EARN.our pennies
decentralize..specialize..speculate..

teach kids
how..the system works
how they too..can scam the lurks..off the govt cash trough..
and get mug renters*..SIC*..to PAY_OFF..their in*vestment..for them and their..selfish-essences.. too.

rehctub has valid a point,

It is a changing world and the changes are leaving much, but not all, of our manufacturing industry isolated.

Globalised markets, energy and wages costs are critical for survival.

We have a population of about 23Bn, Shanghai alone has 26Bn and some 25 other cities in Asia have more population that our country. Unless we have an export market many times greater than our domestic market, it will fail.

We are already seeing some of our competitors shifting their manufacturing bases away from traditional low wages regions to low energy cost regions. The USA has already repatriated dozens of US corporate facilities from Asia/China back to the USA, TATA is doing the same in Europe and VW’s latest plant will be in Washington State. Gas prices in the USA are 60% less than the EU.

The crazy thing is that USA is also benefitting from increases in coal exports, particularly to Europe with Germany alone increasing hard coal imports by 17%.

So Australia suffers from high energy costs, high wages costs, limited export markets, increased competition and a limited domestic market.

rehctub is right, our manufacturing will soon be visiting Centrelink

rehctub has valid a point,

It is a changing world and the changes are leaving much, but not all, of our manufacturing industry isolated.

Globalised markets, energy and wages costs are critical for survival.

We have a population of about 23Bn, Shanghai alone has 26Bn and some 25 other cities in Asia have more population that our country. Unless we have an export market many times greater than our domestic market, it will fail.

We are already seeing some of our competitors shifting their manufacturing bases away from traditional low wages regions to low energy cost regions. The USA has already repatriated dozens of US corporate facilities from Asia/China back to the USA, TATA is doing the same in Europe and VW’s latest plant will be in Washington State. Gas prices in the USA are 60% less than the EU.

The crazy thing is that USA is also benefitting from increases in coal exports, particularly to Europe with Germany alone increasing hard coal imports by 17%.

So Australia suffers from high energy coasts, high wages costs, limited export markets increased competition and a limited domestic market.

rehctub is right, our manufacturing will soon be visiting Centrelink

Yes Spindoc, Insourcing is all the go in the US.
The exact same conditions should happen here for the same reasons.
Unless the IR and some other conditions are fixed it will not happen.

National service would be a great start to stabilise wages & re-boot manufacturing here. As I have said so many times here, start providing overseas aid with locally manufactured, tents, wheel barrows, shovels etc. instead of simply sending millions in cash. Start manufacturing smaller & less fancy cars, start building small aircraft, start building small scale & gradually it will build on itself. It's called making money go round then out the window. Vote conservative next election.