Thread: Climate Change and our Land of Fire, Flood and Drought.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Actually we can. There’s an old saying ”Stick to your knitting”

If a portion of this planet is optimum for fruit and vegetable growing it should do that with its eye on supplying the world.

If a portion of the planet is raw minerals it should look to supply them globally

Same for Cattle etc etc...

In economic terms it is call "competitive advantage" and countries should only produce things where they have a competitive advantage - hence Australia should not be making cars, we should be making hi tech electronics, and hi tech specialist military equipment. We should be digging holes in the ground and exporting it, but if we had a competitive advantage in value adding we should but we dont.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Eighty percent of our GDP is generated from a thin strip around the coasts.
Climate change is shrinking our suitable land for growing food.
Much of our grazing land is already low productivity wasteland.
Our luck is running out.

Most of our export income and most of our food does not come from the thin strip round our coasts. Most of it comes from mining and agriculture, with the major agriculture exports (wool, cattle, milk products, wheat, cotton, predominantly from inland areas.

Most GDP is from the coastal strip simply because that is where most of us live, and our income and spending is counted as a major part of the GDP. There are a lot of problems with GDP as a measure of economic activity, but there is nothing that has agreement on being an improvement.

Originally Posted by 101RRS

In economic terms it is call "competitive advantage" and countries should only produce things where they have a competitive advantage - hence Australia should not be making cars, we should be making hi tech electronics, and hi tech specialist military equipment. We should be digging holes in the ground and exporting it, but if we had a competitive advantage in value adding we should but we dont.

Apparently you have not noticed that we don't make cars here anymore. Our governments have allowed the motor industry jobs and consumer dollars to be exported.

Our industry has a dig it up, cut it down, ship it out attitude. This is wrong. We need to at least partially process as much of our primary production and natural resources as we can. Only manufacturing can provide the large numbers of low skilled jobs for the 800,000 Australians on Newstart or Disability Pension (with a capacity to work).

We need to export unemployment, not jobs. Make it mandatory by legislation for certain goods to be made here.

You (read we) can not afford to do such a thing.
Mandating value add with cost add. Rendering us non-competitive in the global market on normal items.

How many times on this forum alone do we see people avoiding costs by buying direct from OS (you did it for a living)? You only added value by having it right here, right now (convenience) otherwise all your customers would have gone OS as well.

For what I get paid, and what I wish to get paid, there is no chance that if my job could go OS it would remain here.

Heck, the wages paid to those labourers on site and previous car workers was far above and beyond.

Simply. Post processing in Australia at Australian wages cannot compete with other countries. Nobody is willing to take a step back - housing costs are high beyond reality, General costs to meet Brick & Mortar operations are high. Costs to hold goods, taxes, and good old insurance nowadays drive local costs up.

Not going to happen! And if taxes were reduced, there goes the money pool....

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Apparently you have not noticed that we don't make cars here anymore. Our governments have allowed the motor industry jobs and consumer dollars to be exported.

Our industry has a dig it up, cut it down, ship it out attitude. This is wrong. We need to at least partially process as much of our primary production and natural resources as we can. Only manufacturing can provide the large numbers of low skilled jobs for the 800,000 Australians on Newstart or Disability Pension (with a capacity to work).

We need to export unemployment, not jobs. Make it mandatory by legislation for certain goods to be made here.

For that to happen, we need government incentive$, but more to the point, public $upport for 'Australian Made'. Somehow, I don't see the latter as happening any time soon.

We CAN design / invent / build just as good as anywhere else, but we're absolute rubbish at leveraging whatever advantage we have.

Case in point would be Norway exploring our Great Australian Bight for oil/gas, and compare how they would treat a foreign company doing the same in their waters.

Norway set to gain more from drilling in Great Australian Bight than Australia | Energy | The Guardian

Why ? One can only speculate.

Rain is coming. Not quick enough for some, but it is coming.


Weekly Tropical Climate Note

Climate outlook review 2020.


http://nacp.org.au/static/climate_ou...ok_2020-01.pdf

Better for WA than the rest of us, but even low rainfall is better than none.