Lefty...from 2004 to 2014 BHP Billiton showed a "profit to ordinary shareholders" of some $1,017 Billion (Australian). In the same time it cost them just over half a million $Aust ($576,000 to be precise) in the WA Supreme Court for deaths caused to employees/contractors and injuries attributable to their poor work practices and safety system issues.

Not a bad 'profit' hey ?

I have enjoyed the many "window seats" home from various sites around Australia after taking on management/supervisors over OH&S concerns. My best effort was the photos I sent directly to ABC News when WorkSafe officers had been en route to site after a scaffolder was injured.

As the WorkSafe reps pulled up at the scene, 2 x steel wedges ('dogs') weighing around 3 kg each had slipped out of a plate of steel about 36 metres up on the side of a caustic soda tank, due to sunlight heating up the plates. They ricocheted off the pipework and went through both doors of the Hilux they were sitting in. One wedge took out the gearstick after ripping through the blokes trousers ( no injuries) and the other wedge punched a neat hole through the guard and into the engine block.

When they had both got out and checked their underwear, they closed down the site entirely. IF the Rio Tinto Safety reps had actually listened to the tradesmen on the job and taken the wedges out prior to their blanket ban on tasks progressing due to the scaffy being hurt, then this very near miss could have been avoided.

What has killed the mining industry is the 457 Visa, cost over run and a very severe lack of common sense. The Safety issue became another Gravy Train for every Tom, Richard Head and Harry to exploit, so much so that it more often than not takes 3 times longer to do the documentation on a single task than it does to do the actual job.

Shadow minister

Thank you for the Jack and Jill version of economic theory. If life was as it described then you would be correct, but it is not. Ask people and they will tell you the most important part of their budget is the part that buys accommodation and descent food. When I left school a skilled trade’s man wage packet was sufficient to buy a simple home and basic food for a home cooked meal for the family.

Fast forward to today and that is no longer the case for most people. Buying a house is no longer an option for many university graduates, and the quality of food has deteriorated markedly. I am not sure why you alone on this thread don’t understood that, I guess you don’t get out much. You are also correct that occupations have changed over the years, that does not mean that things are better than they used to be.

You have still not stated exactly what people are supposed to re train as and what industries they should focus on. All you seem to post is generalized waffle that does not answer my question.

This is why are keep prodding you for answers regarding this wonderful time we are supposed to be living in. You continue to ignore parts of the government paper that don’t fit your reality. You are correct that the price of many things have been reduced, so Australians have a lot more stuff than they used to, however the household debt is the highest in the world per captor, is that also a good thing?

The reality is that most manufacturing is now in countries that pay $5 a day with no benefits or pensions. Also more AI is taking out many office jobs such as accounting, legal, and computer aided design, to name a few. So please tell me what we are supposed to do, to sell to the rest of the world, now that they don’t need as much stuff we used to dig out of the ground.
Chris

Lefty,

The reality is that the economic theory is more than 100yrs old, and has proven repeatedly ad nauseum to be correct. The anecdotal recollections of your mates does not comprise accurate evidence in any way. For example, we hire nearly 30 tradesmen of which nearly all have at least one property and an enviable lifestyle, most of whom with overtime get >$100k.

As for Jobs, with the collapse in the mining sector, why is unemployment lower than in 2013 when labor lost power?

As to living standards, I have given your examples, yet you have not provided one iota of evidence to prove your point.

Shadow minister
The economic theory that you refer to is in its death throes. I say this without hesitation, or having had some chats with mates over a few beers. It has worked well for many years but now the basic flaws in the system are clear to anyone who cares to look at the financial news instead of the funny papers.The GFC in 2008 was the cannery in the mine, which laid bare the ridicules casino that world finance has become. According to the author of the big short , 5 trillion US (in the US alone) disappeared from the valuations of pension funds, university endowment funds, etc.

The world’s financial mandarin’s solution is printing money to bail out the failing banking system. We are supposed to be in recovery which is why the stock markets are rising. However the clue that we are actually in a recession, is the fact that interest rates are still dropping with 20 % of the world government bonds, (65T) now having negative returns. A number of major trading nations imports and exports have dropped for the last 2 quarters . This includes China, Japan and Germany, which has nothing to do with Australia’s labor party or unions.

I don’t doubt you pay your tradesman well. As a fitter and turner who started his life as a tradesman in England on 20 pounds a week, I remember the fights the unions had to raise our wages and conditions. There are only two reasons you pay what you pay to your tradesman, and that is union pressure over the years and you can pass that cost onto the buyer of your final product.

If TTP is implemented and your customers can find a cheaper supplier,then you will cut costs,get bought out,or close. What you fail to understand is that the very efficiency that you advocate for so strongly is creating a world of over capacity in the productive sector. I know you think I am a complete fool for my ideas, well time will tell if I am right or not.
Chris

Lefty,

Our plant is brand new and not unionised. A high tech plant needs highly skilled tradesmen and technicians and in the field we are in these are not unusual wages. And as we we trade internationally our prices are set by the market and cannot be passed on.

Secondly, the GFC has nothing to do with basic economic laws, rather the inverse. Ignoring basic economic laws was precisely why the GFC, and subsequently the debt crisis occurred, namely:
1) Pouring money via junk bonds into unsecured loans for housing in a bubble would inevitably lead to a crash,
2) Uncontrolled government spending leading to high government debt made the crisis far worse as increased debt repayment costs and reduced tax revenues made recessions far more severe.

Thirdly, Aus is not in recession, and presently neither is the rest of the world. Growth is slow but positive, and the economies are essentially restructuring where the old inefficient businesses are replaced with new ones as has happened many times before after just about every recession.

In short, I will take my economics degree before your conspiracy theory any day.

Shadow Minister & Lefty;
SM, Lefty is right to a large extent but not for the reasons he gives.
There is a serious energy problem facing us that few economists
understand and that is distorting most opinions on future paths.
Note the almost total cessation by major oil companies of investment
in search and development. They lost two trillion dollars in S & D in
2013 to 2014 because the result was so poor.
In not so many years that cessation will lead to significant problems.

What will happen is that capitalism will have to adapt to a completely
new environment. I do not think anyone can estimate just how much
disruption to normal operations will occur.
Expect a cessation of air freight and probably the abandonment of
Badgeries Creek airport due to lower air traffic caused by high air fares.

Watch the major oil companies and see where they invest their money.
It is not generally understood that conventional oil production has
fallen over the last years from the peak in 2005 of 83 million
barrels a day to the current 74 million a day.
The most the economy can pay is around $50 to $60 a barrel but the
drillers now need around $100 plus for tight shale oil which is also
declining.

Those are very difficult to get around facts that are easily checked.
Then coal is also in trouble and not just for political reasons.
The energy return on coal world wide has fallen to the point where it is becoming uneconomical.

So capitalism if it is to continue will have to adapt and I have no
doubt it will but as governments just do not want to know it will not
be without severe pain.