Hasbeen,

"If they had looked at the history of industry in the UK they could have easily saved our car industry."

If you look at "recent" history in the UK, you'll find they're busily amassing Foodbanks....1,000 and counting.

"Numbers relying on Foodbanks triple in a year."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24536817

"Rising living costs and stagnant wages are forcing more people to live on a "financial knife edge"

"The Trussell Trust said the problem was so severe that some people using food banks have started to hand back items that need cooking, as they cannot afford to use the energy."

""The Trussell Trust itself says it is opening three new food banks every week..."

Should we emulate the UK?

This is exactly what Butch and Hasbeen want. They are so far to the right it would make Abbott cringe.
They don't have middle ground it's all the way or no way.
This is what continually brings the noalition unstuck every time.
They don't learn anything, just stumble around like a mob of drunks.

Change is necessary. Judith Sloan's suggestions have merit. Logical, evidence-based and practical. She is not for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What other workable alternatives are there?

Poirot & 579,
You'd be quite happy then not to buy any cheap imports & pay heavily for for local services at exorbitant rates because you do want the staff to get paid penalty rates just because they work on sundays ? How far do you think your public service pay would last if you did that ?
I'd be more in favour of people working overtime because they need time off at other times & therefore work for normal pay. Like that fellow we had, he'd only put his name down for weekends & public holidays so he could earn twice as much for no more effort. That's called being a parasite.

Poirot, did you intentionally misunderstand? I was referring to the fact that the UK unions destroyed their own car industry, by pure bloody mindedness, 40 years ago.

As in Oz, hand in glove with a UK Labor government, unions made car manufacturing unviable, they expected subsidies to go on for ever. To the unions profit was a dirty word, & were too stupid to see that no profit, no industry.

They actively prevented their employers running profitably, & government subsidies came with strings, which further damaged company operations.

Brilliant technology developed by the Poms is now owned in a number of other countries, & the only car industry in the UK is foreign owned plants building cars for foreign companies.

It is the same kind of bloody mindedness displayed by posters like 579, who would rather be unemployed & broke, than have someone more intelligent provide them a job, if the job provider was likely to profit from doing so. These people are only employable in government sheltered workshops called the public service.

The same people then scream equality, & demand someone else pay their way. That is why the UK is such a goddamn mess. Last time, like Oz, they were luck. North sea oil got them out of the mess rabid unions & week government had made them, just as coal & iron ore have done for Oz.

That is where the luck stopped however. With still week government they went racing off down the welfare state path, gobbling up the oil dollars, buying yobo votes.

So now you know why the UK is a growing disaster zone, with nothing short of another north sea oil bonanza likely to stop the rot.

Study this history, we are on our way to repeating the whole catastrophe very shortly. Rudd & Gillard got us very close, start praying Abbott toughens up damn soon, we've probably only get one last chance.

Some seem to think penalty rates etc, are something the employee imposed on the employer. Far from it, conditions of employment through awards or agreements are something that are determined by collective bargaining and then ratified by an independent umpire. What could be fairer than that?
If you want to operate within an industry as an employer of people then you have to be prepared to run your business according to the law, and the industrial laws covering an employee's minimum entitlements is an award. I have come across more than the one employer who though "these award conditions are too generous, therefore I'll just make up my own." The one I particularly liked was the employer who on weekends rather than pay penalty rates, would send out for pizzas. I assume after 4 hours the worker got 1 1/2 slices of Ham and Pineapple and then after 8 hrs was entitled to 2 slices of Super Supreme, By the way the employers was a muti millionaire. Just didn't think penalty rates were fair (on him), must have though pizza was fairer.
If we allow the marginal types to start operating outside the law, because they cant or wont meet those minimum standards where would it end?

Beach the link for the 11.9% is www:-herald-in-my-recycle-box.com.au