Thread: help needed to save our manufacturing.

Originally Posted by Eevo

so where does this leave us?

I wish I knew the answer. I really worry about the future of this country. The world moves on and industries will always come and go, we have to accept this and adapt to the change. We just seem to be losing more than we are gaining at the moment.

De-regulating the economy and opening up our borders to trade has been very good for this country, but we need to be careful not to go too far as pure economic rationalism ignores the social and environmental costs.

Allowing market forces to prevail without a regulatory framework has been shown not to work, look at the causes of the GFC or read up about laissez faire in Europe. We need government to provide a regulatory framework and to support/nurture industries which benefit society. They were able to support the banks during the GFC, they should be able to do the same for other important industries which face external factors beyond their control.

As with all things in life there needs to be balance. I don't think we have the balance right at the moment.

Cheers,
Jon

Why Ford have closed,....another view, in the Press today. Ford advised it had lost $1.05B over the last five years, DESPITE receiving $483M in taxpayer funding??!!! Ford specified "Significant manufacturing costs"??? in this country.
So, Frantic, we put $500M of OUR dollars into Ford,.....and they still go?
I have mentioned our "costs" before, but I have yet to read a response from you on that one?
You'd know more about the Arium/Whyalla issue than I do for sure, but I think I've read that "cost" of the product is an issue,...and it's not just the "costs" at the plant,...it's the total cost of ALL of the infrastructure involved, transport, electricity, ALL of the costs involved, which contribute to the cost of the end product. ... What is the latest here,....what are the "vibes"?
Pickles.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

Why Ford have closed,....another view, in the Press today. Ford advised it had lost $1.05B over the last five years, DESPITE receiving $483M in taxpayer funding??!!! Ford specified "Significant manufacturing costs"??? in this country.
So, Frantic, we put $500M of OUR dollars into Ford,.....and they still go?
I have mentioned our "costs" before, but I have yet to read a response from you on that one?
You'd know more about the Arium/Whyalla issue than I do for sure, but I think I've read that "cost" of the product is an issue,...and it's not just the "costs" at the plant,...it's the total cost of ALL of the infrastructure involved, transport, electricity, ALL of the costs involved, which contribute to the cost of the end product. ... What is the latest here,....what are the "vibes"?
Pickles.

Been through before , continue to ignore maybe if you answered my questions with figures it would show the truth?
10,000 employees, sunnies ,suppliers employees,external contractors and other service workers out of work .
You tell me the welfare cost?
You tell me the tax they paid from 2010-2015?
How much of the 10,000 employed spent of their wages ( after tax)in their communities( and value) e.g a line worker pays $10,000 tax and spends the 55,000 left over locally?
You tell me the gst collected on all the ford oz made sales?
Add all these up and are they more or less than $120million a year?
Don't answer and we know the truth , or lack of , in your claims

This is how stupid the argument is;
As a farmer would you stop buying seed if the minimum return on the crop was 5 times the cost?
From what Your saying you would!
And what your ignoring is the Chinese "steel" farmer is selling his harvested crops delivered cheaper than the seeds WE sold to him!
Interesting article if your bothered:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/outla...b_9817034.html

No worries Frantic, I obviously don't know "your" version of "the truth",..but I do know my version, so I'm happy with that.
Doesn't mean to say that I'm not sympathetic to your "position" at the moment.
So, how long have you been employed (at Whyalla?), what do you do there, and as I have asked in my previous post, "what are the latest vibes"?
Pickles.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

No worries Frantic, I obviously don't know "your" version of "the truth",..but I do know my version, so I'm happy with that.
Doesn't mean to say that I'm not sympathetic to your "position" at the moment.
So, how long have you been employed (at Whyalla?), what do you do there, and as I have asked in my previous post, "what are the latest vibes"?
Pickles.

You don't have to know my " version " of anything, just put numbers to my questions, in red and tell me your version of what those figures point to?

Also you know full well where I live and am employed,which involved blast furnace, slab caster and now raw materials ( that's like me asking how retirement in Brisbane is going) but the latest facts , not vibes are China is not slowing production, something about not wanting to cause mass unemployment. This means their still going to export about 15-20 million tons a month, swamping the world market. Basically for every 10 million tons they stop producing there are 180,000 jobs lost, as their making 100-200 million tons to much it's 1.8-3.6 million unemployed. Their figures.
At the moment with the low dollar steel making here is borderline profitable, but if China continues to write off 10's of billions of their steel makers debts(50 billion usd to one company) what chance do we have.

As to your costs, raw materials , and plant are the vast majority. Labour is 5% , China dumps it at 10-20% lower. But their transport costs are far higher.
I saw an article on a proposed steel plant in India and another in China, same capacity and guess what same cost as one here( Gladstone) .
So in a true level playing field, we would make the cheaper steel as our reduction in transport costs would far outweigh our wage differences.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

Why Ford have closed,....another view, in the Press today. Ford advised it had lost $1.05B over the last five years, DESPITE receiving $483M in taxpayer funding??!!! Ford specified "Significant manufacturing costs"??? in this country.
So, Frantic, we put $500M of OUR dollars into Ford,.....and they still go?
I have mentioned our "costs" before, but I have yet to read a response from you on that one?
You'd know more about the Arium/Whyalla issue than I do for sure, but I think I've read that "cost" of the product is an issue,...and it's not just the "costs" at the plant,...it's the total cost of ALL of the infrastructure involved, transport, electricity, ALL of the costs involved, which contribute to the cost of the end product. ... What is the latest here,....what are the "vibes"?
Pickles.

Sorry, I'm with Frantic on this one.
It's never as simple as saying we, the taxpayers, have "given" Ford $483million of "our" money and yet they're still closing. For a start, the taxpayer funding given to the auto firms is called co-investment, i.e. the companies have to stump up the equivalent amount themselves, at least another $400 odd million.
Anyway, assuming that $483 million over the last 5 years is correct, that works out to be roughly $4 per person per year. Even if that funding is per year and not split over 5 years, it's still only roughly $20 per person per year.
Which is tiny compared to the $90 per person Germany gives (x 80million people) or the $260 per person in the USA (x 300million!) to their auto industries.
Those countries at least appear to take the view expressed by Frantic that it's better to indirectly provide welfare support via payment/incentives to industry that keeps some of the population employed (and at least get some tax back from the workforce) than have hundreds of thousands on the dole!

I've banged on about this in various other threads that have cropped up over the years, but it's not as simple as saying our government should prop up industry (or that they impose tariffs on everything that comes into Australia), but there needs to be a happy medium.
Australia (for the car industry at least) had the lowest level of government funding of any car producing nation and yet also has the lowest import tariffs.
No other country is this naive in leaving an industry to fend for itself. You mentioned Thailand. We have a free trade agreement with Thailand; cars made there come here duty free, so Australian made cars go there duty free, right? Technically, yes, but as soon as that agreement was signed, they imposed an "environmental" tax on imported cars, which instantly made the Falcodores etc. cost 100% more and effectively killed off any hope of exporting cars there.
No export equals small(er) profits, equals less ability to develop new products, equals smaller market share with old products, equals even less profit, which equals?.. you get the idea.

A succession of Australian governments didn't/wouldn't do this sort of bending of the rules and "played fair" on a global trade scale, but the truth is that no other country does the same.

At some point, for at least one of our (few) remaining industries, whichever party is in government needs to take a much wider global view than simply looking in at the Australian market and have a look at what the rest of the world is doing with regard to that industry and provide some regulatory help.

No need to be "sorry" guys, simply your opinion is different to mine.
The Ford issue is only one,..even though we helped 'em they still lost money, & their cars didn't sell. Same with Holden, look at the sales, ....COSTS & low sales= no manufacturing.
I've mentioned "Economies Of Scale"...No one's listening....comparing our economy with Germany or the U.S. is ridiculous,....We just haven't got the numbers.
Everybody talks about being even handed, sympathetic, gotta be a better way. BUT NO-ONE knows what it is,....of course Frantic will be on about Govt "support",.....well if the Govt "supported" all the industries that have left & gone O.S., we'd have gone broke long ago. If the dollars were there, it would've happened, & they ain't there now either,....ya just can't spend spend spend, there's gotta be an end to that.
Frantic, I said you're the best "figure man" on the planet, ..problem is,they don't add up. Mate, if they did, WHY hasn't a Govt of either side FOR THE LAST FORTY YEARS done things as you suggest,...WHY?
NOW,..a serious point. Frantic, seriously, I asked you what you did because I meant it,..I could've sent you a PM to ask you this question again, but no I thought, 'cause I ain't got no secrets, I'd ask you again on here. I DIDN'T know what you did. Maybe you've told me before, buy ya gotta remember, I'M OLD, so maybe I forgot, but I don't think so. Anyway it was a serious question. How long have you worked there, and I did ask what the latest vibes were,....what do you guys (employees) think will happen?
Regards, Pickles.
Nb: I'm not retired in Brisbane, I'm retired in Melbourne.

Yes the economies of scale in countries such as Germany and the US is relevant, exactly because, as you say, we as a much smaller population, can't compete.
Those countries give massive support to their car industries, who (and this is the important bit) export their cars to Australia..!!

So the playing field isn't level, because those companies get this massive support from their governments, get allowed into Australia at the bare minimum of cost and get to compete against local products who receive (in comparison) next to no help at all.

Do you think the situation is reversed for similar products from Australia entering those countries?

So it's not about the government just providing financial support to prop up any individual industry (like you say, we couldn't afford it), it's about the government wising up, stopping Australia becoming a free-for-all for everyone else, when no-one returns the favour.