Dear Shadowminister,

How dare you.

For one thing it is the ideology of your party that has stripped the state of a vehicle manufacturing industry. You have been the one here spruiking free trade deals, slashing of any last tariffs, and 457 visa holders.

You had the temerity to label someone on this forum as a xenophobe because he questioned the free trade deal with China and the TPP. I think Trump is a disaster but I can empathise with those who felt threatened enough by your brand of ideology to go and vote the guy in. They must have been very desperate.

You really should take a long hard look at what you have had to sacrifice of yourself to follow so blindly an ideology so harmful to so many Australians.

We hear little about wave power generation in Australia even though one station, at least, is feeding power into the grid in Western Australia.

Wonder which political party opposes wave power generation?

Shadow,
I was living overseas at the turn of the millennium, so my knowledge of the severe cost and reliability problems is heavily reliant on The Advertiser's coverage of it (their website was pretty good in those early days). Are you claiming all those brownouts and rolling blackouts were a media beatup?

Since returning in late 2003 I have not been overseas.

I don't dispute that the price of electricity has nearly doubled. But the claim that this is due to the vast subsidies for renewable power shows that you're ignoring the facts and basing your opinion on your prejudices instead! Haven't you ever seen the cost breakdowns? Most of the increase is network costs (and network operator's huge profits). Fuel costs have risen substantially (particularly for gas, which has long been SA's main energy source for generating electricity). The subsidies for renewables make up a single figure percentage of the electricity price.

Solar thermal, being somewhat dispatchable, should be profitable unsubsidized as long as it has access to cheap finance — and by producing electricity when it's needed most, it will do much more to drive down the total cost than wind power and solar PV alone.

SR,

What a hissy fit!!,

I have never seen you lie so blatantly before.

1 - The car industry was destroyed primarily by Labor. Note that 2 of the 4 car manufacturers decided to close up shop under labor, and 75% of the work force was retrenched under labor. The primary cause being the new Labour laws, the militant unions and the wildly unrealistic labour costs in the car industry. By the end of 2013 the local manufacturers had lost nearly 90% of their market, and there was no long term future for the industry. The huge subsidies essentially paid the wages of everyone that worked there, and they still made a loss.

2 - The only time I called someone a xenophobe was not just because he challenged the free trade deal, but his basis for challenging the deal was because it was with the chinese. Perhaps the correct term should have been racist. (which seems to be very common trait in unionists)

3 - Free trade has been the basis of the economic growth over the past 5 decades, and only an economic ignoramus would oppose it. I guess that makes you just like Trump and Hoover.

4 - I do prefer skilled 457 visa employees who create jobs and pay taxes over the 50 000 illegal immigrants most of which are still on welfare and costing the taxpayer hundreds of $m.

I make no apologies for my views which are founded on sound science, economics and morals, unlike the wanton waste and incompetence of Labor and the Greens.

Dear Shadowminister,

Oh come on.

No mention of the Aussie dollar at $1.10 US because of the mining boom? A boom that almost everyone could see would come to an end? It is now at .75 cents, an increase in compeditiveness of over 30% for our manufacturing workers.

Romney wanted to withdraw assistence for the US car industry during the GFC and let it fail. Obama instead supported it with loans which were paid back within 2 years.

As to wages how come the German car manufacturers are making twice as many cars as the US while paying their workers 50% more?

You wrote;

“The only time I called someone a xenophobe was not just because he challenged the free trade deal, but his basis for challenging the deal was because it was with the chinese. Perhaps the correct term should have been racist.”

Absolute bulldust my friend.

Here is the relevant converstation - http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6948&page=0#212158

None of this was about race rather than about Australian jobs and the stripping of mandatory skill requirements. You were the rightwing elietist who slung the 'xenophobic' slur to quieten any criticism of an ideology driven by unbridled worship of laissez faire capitalism. Please don't feign any concern for SA jobs, it is purely lipservice.

Your views are not “founded on sound science, economics and morals” but rather a discredited trickle down economic ideology which is gutting the middle classes in so many countries.

Shadow,

'Tis true that when the highly polluting Hazelwood power station closes, the price of power in Victoria will go up. However the effect is likely to be limited by the high capacity interstate connections that Victoria already has. And AIUI Victoria only supplies Tasmania in the off-peak; Tasmania supplies Victoria in the peaks.

The SA Labor government are dreadfully incompetent: their PPP deal to move the RAH to the other side of the CBD is probably the worst ever decision for our economy in purely financial terms. The trouble is the state Libs are also keen on stupid projects, and don't support good projects such as encouraging the use of renewable energy.

As for the car industry, there's a widespread consensus that the only reason its closure wasn't announced in the Howard era is that after The Advertiser reported the decision to close it had already been made, those in charge decided to keep it open a few months longer to save face.

The car industry employing fewer people was the result of more mechanisation: a good thing because it reduced costs. And militant unions are mainly an eastern states problem, rarely affecting SA.

It was the Abbott government's lack of support which finally killed off the car industry, but car manufacturing is no longer the high value activity it once was. It's unlikely it could've lasted much longer whoever was in charge. The real problem is manufacturing in general: governments have set interest rates far too high for SA (making it unnecessarily expensive to invest in new equipment) and high interest rates have also pushed our dollar higher than is justified by our balance of trade. That, not the mining boom, is what caused most damage to our manufacturers, and both Labor and Liberal failed to deal with the problem.