An old mate of mine worked in Maryborough building railway rolling stock & locomotives, another built small commercial ships there. Today no one builds anything but houses in the district, & they ride trains imported from Korea. Today the freight those ships carried is transported on mostly imported trucks.

Even the railway industries in our major cities no longer build things like railway, earth moving gear, or even cars. We used our existing industrial skills to build hundreds of aircraft during WW11, but I doubt we have the capacity left to do it today.

It is quite fair to say we have become a country of bludgers, "B" grade teachers & burger flippers. God help our grand kids, they will be the poor white trash of the south Pacific, if we don't change our ways. Yep she'll most definitely not be right.

Hasbeen, there is NO magic pill.
The AVERAGE AUSSIE did this by being greedy, selfish, arrogant and completely devoid of any long term vision.
They accepted the BS the unions put out, and got their higher wages and ultimately achieved nothing.
Had the wages remained low, the internal economy, the thing you and I have to deal with and called the "cost of living" would not change.
The difference would have been that we would not have to import all the things we used to make here, as you so rightly point out.
On top of that we would have been serious contenders for exporting the very goods and services we now import.
This is NOT my imagination or speculation, it is economic and historical fact.
This absolute stupidity of increasing wages when we know that it increases every other thing around us, so just where is the benefit of increasing wages, when the price of goods and services, MUST go up, because you increased the (dare I say it yet again) WAGES.
There is absolutely no truth or weight behind the foolish belief that you increase wages, then you have more money to spend.
IDIOTS, one and all.
All they're doing is making our exports unviable and the govt happier because they collect more income tax.
What absolute morons and idiots out there actually believing that the company would absorb the increase of their wages.
They pass it on to, yep you guessed it, YOU!
The sooner the left/labor/union idiots ditch their stupid left ideals the sooner we can begin our economic recovery.

Dear Armchair Critic,

CEC.

"The party espouses the claim that the Port Arthur massacre, in which Martin Bryant murdered 35 people and injured 37 others, was instigated by mental health institute the Tavistock Institute on the orders of the British Royal Family."
Wikipedia

Yup fruitloops of the finest kind who attract our fringe dwelling folk. Not everything they put up is without merit but really whacky on so much.

SR, you know who is whacky, with a side of fruit-loops?
YOU!
Again you dare speak of something YOU know absolutely nothing about.
You come across as an arrogant know-it-all, along with your running mates, and you know how well they have been received.
OK, I am if nothing else, open minded.
Assuming we all agree with you, then it is upon you to explain and justify why YOU disagree with someone far more aware and worldly than you, with access to people and information far more than you will ever imagine.
What is it that you know which would lead us to believe you and not the CEC?
This much I DO know about the CEC, they have affiliations in other countries and are continually seeking out facts and figures, in an attempt to expose the truth about what govt's do or try to do.
So far they have been right.
They are far more aware of global antics than YOU will ever be or ever dream to be.
So unless you are part of the Royal Family or the Tavistock Institute, the best thing you can do is shut up and say nothing, or speak up and debunk this allegation.
I have no idea of it's veracity, but I follow the CEC and if I'm not mistaken, you quoted Wikipedia.
If that's the case then even more stupid than you yourself have admitted by even writing the comment in the first place.
Were you bored and like Mr O seeking some kind of a "look at moi" moment.
For the record, the "City of London" is corrupt and evil as they are part of the elite group, so it doea not surprise me if it turns out to be true.
But what the hey, Mr SR says it's all bull, then it must be.

Re: Port Arthur Massacre.

I watched a documentary quite a few years ago that went over a lot of the issues.
I've got to say that I felt at the time of watching the documentary that there was a number of unanswered questions, and a number of weird events or coincidences which cast some suspicion over the official narrative.

I wish I could find that documentary, I searched my YouTube history for it, but it's not there, maybe YouTube deleted the video.
(It happens quite often on YouTube these days.)

I don't know what the truth of it all is, but I felt (after these facts were laid out) that some of those issues couldn't simply be coincidences and that there might've been more to the story.

- Truthfully though, I wasn't there so I don't really know.

ALTRAV,
1. I've been consistent and correct, whereas you've been proved wrong, so why should I bother reading your comments again.
We should of course create jobs for the unemployed, and this would be relatively easy if the government weren't so fixated on running a surplus. Full employment is always achievable regardless of our balance of trade.

2. We'll probably always need welders. But we won't need factories full of welders doing the same thing over and over again. Those jobs have been automated away, and good riddance! There's no advantage in doing this kind of low value work. Why do you think Aussies are incapable of doing more? It may surprise you to learn we don't all share your stupidity!

3. You made a claim based on a semantic error, so it was worth pointing out something I'd normally let slide.

4. The current system has brought a mixture of successes and failures, The sensible course of action would be to examine the reasons for those successes and failures, so that the successes can be replicated and the failures avoided. The stupidest possible course of action would be to replace the entire system with something that's certain to fail.

5. I'm glad that you finally admit we don't have the trade deficit that you felt warranted slashing everyone's wages. But I see it hasn't stopped you talking rubbish!

>The poor are poor and can't afford imports anyway.
Imports aren't always more expensive, and in some cases there's no locally made alternative at all.

>Poor or not we should buy Aussie anyway, don't care if someone can't buy imported goods, too bad, it won't kill them.
International trade benefits both the sellers and the buyers. Why should we deny everyone the benefits?

6. Your insults better describe yourself, for it's clear you don't even know the difference between value and cost! The value of jobs is how lucrative they are for employers.

I'll leave this discussion here for tonight to give this crucial point time to sink into your thick head, but I can explain it further if you like.