Australia, the clever country , not !

**goingbush** · 2nd June 2018, 03:02 PM

I was in a discussion about how stuffed Australia is with the demise of the Motor industry ,

I argued at least we still make the GA8 Airvan GA being Gippsland Aviation
then I was shocked when I googled & see its now the Mahindra Airvan , when did that happen ??

Mahindra Aerospace – MAPL

Do we actually make anything anymore ??

No longer the clever country . The stupid country we are truly knackered now past the point of no return & 23 days away from Anarchy if someone decided to turn off our fuel supply.

**Eevo** · 2nd June 2018, 03:11 PM

Originally Posted by goingbush

Do we actually make anything anymore ??

excuses

**Mick_Marsh** · 2nd June 2018, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by goingbush

Do we actually make anything anymore ??

Yes we do. I work in manufacturing.

Mind you, over the years pieces of the process have been carved off and moved off shore, along with thousands of jobs.
You would be surprised why it was moved off shore. You would also be surprised of the consequences negative to that reason.
Add to that, we are competing with imports that are not subject to the same safety, rules and regulations. Don't be fooled, it isn't a level playing field out there.
I understand why Australian businesses are moving off shore. And it's mainly because Australians aren't buying Australian products. After hearing a mate banging on at length about how disgusting it was car manufacturing was closing down in Australia and we were losing those jobs, he showed me his new matching his and hers i30 Hyunais in the garage.
My daily drives over the past twenty years have been an Australian built Commodore, an Australian built Camry, and I am about to buy an Australian built Territory. All three are very good cars.

Summing up, who is responsible for the decline of Australian manufacturing? You, the consumer, are.
Insist on Australian product.

**Mick_Marsh** · 2nd June 2018, 04:37 PM

Oh, add to that, unless Australians buy more of our product, I will be out of a job in a few years time.
The writing on the wall is being written as we whinge, complain and do nothing.

**Eevo** · 2nd June 2018, 05:04 PM

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Summing up, who is responsible for the decline of Australian manufacturing? You, the consumer, are.
Insist on Australian product.

i dont agree.

consumers vote with their feet. if the consumes are not buying australian it's cause its low quality or overpriced. or both.

**p38arover** · 2nd June 2018, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Oh, add to that, unless Australians buy more of our product, I will be out of a job in a few years time.

Every bit of food we buy at the supermarket is scrutinised to find country of manufacture. In some cases, the "manufacturer" seems to have gone to great lengths to obscure that information, e.g., yellow print on a white background.

We routinely reject products not made in Oz.

Today, I picked up some tropical fruit salad sold under the SPC brand. Made in Thailand. It was left on the shelf and SPC peaches and pears were selected instead - 99% made in Oz.

**trout1105** · 2nd June 2018, 05:28 PM

Originally Posted by Eevo

i dont agree.

consumers vote with their feet. if the consumes are not buying australian it's cause its low quality or overpriced. or both.

There is nothing wrong with Australian designed goods many of then are World class the only problem is that to make them here in Australia makes them uncompetitive pricewise because it is so expensive to manufacture anything in Australia compared to other parts of the world where the poor bastards work for peanuts and in conditions that would be illegal in Australia.
In fact the majority of the people that build/make the cars, boats, electronics and white goods overseas cannot afford to buy these products themselves because they simply do not earn enough money making/building these things.
It is pretty hard to expect the Australian consumer to support Australian manufacturers when their products are usually Far more expensive and the choices are so limited as well.

**Gordie** · 2nd June 2018, 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by p38arover

Today, I picked up some tropical fruit salad sold under the SPC brand. Made in Thailand. It was left on the shelf and SPC peaches and pears were selected instead - 99% made in Oz.

Ha funny you say that, just a few hours ago, I picked up a can of cheap baked beans in woollies, saw that they came from UK and put them back.

**scarry** · 2nd June 2018, 07:08 PM

Originally Posted by Eevo

i dont agree.

consumers vote with their feet. if the consumes are not buying australian it's cause its low quality or overpriced. or both.

Agree,if they don't make a product people in Australia want,then it won't sell.

Sure Holden made some fantastic products,the last commodore was a good example.One of my brothers has one of the Redlines,i think they are called.

But they weren't the product the general public wanted,times had changed.

Just like our business,if we don't provide a good service people want,well we wouldn't have a business.

And just for the record,until i bought my first D2,every private vehicle i ever had was a holden,HR,HQ,HZ,VN,VS.

**JDNSW** · 2nd June 2018, 07:52 PM

I have two cars here - one built by Rover Australia, the other by JRA, both models unique to Australia.

But if you look at all of Australian history since 1788, by and large, the only times that manufacturing has been economically practical has been when it has been heavily protected either by tariffs or import restrictions, or when imports have not been possible (for example during two world wars). The reason for this has been that Australian living standards have been among the highest in the world, ever since the gold rush in the 1850s, and this living standard has been supported by high levels of primary production - gold (from 1852), wool (from the 1820s), grain (from about 1910), meat (from about 1880 with refrigeration), and more recently coal and iron ore, with contributions from a variety of other mineral and farm products.

These have bankrolled the introduction of higher wages, better working conditions and red tape, ignoring the fact that these made manufacturing less and less feasible, seen most clearly in the motor industry. The small domestic market and the distance to export anything also tell against local manufacture. At the same time, better communications in the last fifty years have enabled the ordinary Australian to see how much they were paying for protection, while larger, faster, ships and containerisation made importing cheaper. Eventually it became politically untenable to keep protection at these levels, leading to changes like the Button Plan (Hawke government I think?), which was, to anyone with any sense, quite clearly going to lead to the end of the motor industry - and which has now happened.

There is still some manufacturing in Australia, but it is difficult to see how any can have a long term future except for products that serve a niche market. And it is difficult to see how this is likely to change in the foreseeable future unless the Australian dollar drops to around half its present relativity. This is very unlikely to happen except if there is some sort of world disaster, in which case there would likely be a lot of other things to worry about.. And if it were to happen for internal reasons, the outcry from soaring prices for everything would drown out any joy over better prospects for manufacturing.

One of the other factors that has led to a demise of manufacturing has been the Australian attitude to entrepreneurs. By and large, we are not prepared to put our money into manufacturing, or, indeed, any business venture, preferring to put it into real estate or overseas holidays etc. And we attack any successful entrepreneur, especially if they are manufacturing.

The result of this is that successful ventures of all kinds tend to be sold off to overseas buyers - something that has been happening since 1788. The motor industry whose demise is being regretted was run from Detroit and Tokyo, not Sydney or Melbourne. If they had bbeen really Australian, perhaps they may have still been here, but the factors mentioned above would still have been there.

Worth pointing out that the effect of the Chinese manufacturing industry is not an isolated event in history - the UK's industrial revolution effectively destroyed the rest of the world's manufacturing from about 1780 to 1914, although by that tie some of the other countries, particularly Germany, had begun to compete - and the rising standards of living in the UK were eroding their technical advantage as others copied their industrial revolution.

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