With over $5 billion in unfinished projects one of Australia's largest constriction companies Probuild has gone into shock administration. Hundreds of tradies have been sacked, and thousands of other jobs could be lost. This is a worrying trend, and may well be the tip of the iceberg for the Australian construction industry. Shades of China's overheated property market, but on a much smaller scale.

Dear Paul,

What a shame that so many people will take a loss
if a new owner will not be found. Wilson Bayly Holmes
in South Africa has decided not to financially support
Probuild any longer. So many projects will be dumped
as a result. Perhaps a miracle will happen?
Fingers-crossed.

Wilson Bayly Holms blames it squarely on Victoria's mismanagement of Covid, and the stupid idea that the economy could be hibernated, then miraculously awakened a couple of years into the future.

It is not just Covid. It is climate change hysteria and 'net zero by 2050 lunacy.

In the period 2009 to 2019, 76,200 manufacturing jobs were destroyed across Australia while only 14,700 jobs in the renewable sector were created. For every 1 job created in renewables, 5 have been destroyed in manufacturing.

Mining is still the best bet, with 95% of jobs full time compared with 70% across all other sectors. Mining pays double the average wage.

'Net zero by 2050' is predicted to put another 650,000 jobs at risk. And there is bipartisan support for that lunacy, as there is for Big Australia and mass immigration.

Get used to it. The Australian economy is on a hiding to nothing over the next few years. We have federal debt approaching $1Trillion and, based on Frydenberg's estimates it'll be close to $2 Trillion within 4 years.

This at a time when inflation and therefore interest rates are rising in the US and Europe. We have a government gratuitously insulting our major trading partner simply for electoral advantage. All of this leads to higher interest rates here and a devalued dollar which in turns leads to higher inflation and a weak housing market.

Neither member of the uni-party will mention or acknowledge this before the election. The Libs can't admit their WuFlu policies were disastrous for the economy. The Labs, while they'll definitely blame it on the Libs post-election, don't want it mentioned now because then they'd have to say what they'd do about it. And none of the solutions are palatable.

Meanwhile, necessary interest rate rises will be delayed until after the election. Then all speed limits are off.

Buckle down and buckle up....it ain't gunna be pretty.

There was a $300 million bid by a Chinese company to buy Probuild from its South African owners, WBHO. The foreign owners were advised the Morrison government would likely reject the takeover bid.

Does the Morrison government now have an obligation to support the sacked workers of Probuild?

In my view we need to take care not to be too dependent on China- I believe they are one of our biggest trading partners. As the Communists say "capitalists will sell the communists the rope to hang them with".

Australia is too dependent on the low value resources sector rather than value added production.

We shouldn't have let the borrowing to cover social security payments to get to such a state- we could have locked the borders to prevent new strains getting into Australia- so at least people could have continued working and being productive.

If there was less red tape in housing then more people could own their own houses and the government wouldn't need to pay their rent during the Covid incident and the mass unemployment. The mass economy has a number of dangerous dependencies that failed.

There's still a lot that can be done to get people off unemployment benefit's and start covering off their own expenses. But some politicians are unwilling to do it.

There have been anti-vax protests in Canberra- if they can just shut the Australian borders- and let unvaxxed people get back to work then things will be better for the economy. Otherwise things look very bad for the future- every month the debt bill increases. Many people have been out of work for a while and their skills are at risk due to becoming long term out of work. Another notch of failure to manage the economic side of the Covid incident.

Perhaps Scott Morrison should take the social security bill out of the GST payments to the states- especially the irresponsible ones