Thread: The Whyalla steel works must be saved, at any cost

Originally Posted by frantic

No , its being bought, just not buying locally. If the govt bought locally, both BSL and Arrium would be ok, unfortunately their not.
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Found the link to back my numbers.
Buying Australian makes sense


you still haven't answered the question .
Would you rather spend $60 million and get $500million back or "save it today" but tomorrow have to spend $100million and have a $500million hole in your income?

if its being bought and their making a profit, why are they shutting down?

Originally Posted by Bytemrk

Andy,

I thought you didn't start paying hecs until you earned around $54k p.a

either that is some fair vacation job, or I've got my facts crooked....

Loan Repayment - Study Assist

I will ask him,I know he was quite annoyed about it as he uses the money for the year to top up his student allowence.
Andrew

Developed economies make complex premium products such as cars, ships, planes etc which require high investment in skills and facilities. Undeveloped economies don't. Which do we want to be?

Governments should enforce buy locally policies to support local industries by ensuring a base local market exists. For example we have a gas mining industry because the Qld Government in 1995 required 15% of Queensland's electricity to be generated by gas not coal

We might have retained a car manufacturing industry if the Abbott Government had continued the previous government's policy of supporting the manufacture of vehicles which were competitive such as the Holden Cruze and Ford Territory.

Thailand has become the 'Detroit of Asia' by imposing 400% import duties to protect companies which agree to make cars there (which we Aussies buy). That makes the Thais smarter than us Aussies.

If we throw away the steel industry because we're too selfish to work together to build up the country then we also undermine the industries which use its products to manufacture locally. That makes our country poorer and we all lose out in the long term.

We'll end up at the mercy of foreign companies who will jack up their prices to make us pay for being vulnerable to being exploited. I've just come back from Vanuatu so I've seen a vulnerable economy first-hand. Its not a pretty sight.

Surely its time for us Aussies to reject ideological economic theories and get back to doing what actually works in real life. Are we too stupid to see the truth?

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Originally Posted by Eevo

it never makes its money back, look at the car industry.
if the govt made that much return, it would be investing more money. no such thing as a free lunch.

without that 200m handout the business would collapse yes? i call that a bad business model.

very myopic view

well proven that the government both state and federal were getting back much more than they were putting in... sure it wasn't directly but they were certainly getting it back indirectly from the workers and the businesses that depended on it and were supplying it.

whether the company made anything out of it has nothing to do with it in the long run.

conservative governments have been selling off profitable bits of government for years. it's what they aspire to... read their policy platforms.. if it can make money it should be in the private sector they say.. then they pump out the tripe about government having not enough income to pay for health and education.

i'll leave you too your one eyed ideology....

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

We might have retained a car manufacturing industry if the Abbott Government had continued the previous government's policy of supporting the manufacture of vehicles which were competitive such as the Holden Cruze and Ford Territory.

Once again we get this same old clap trap argument .................. (in what had been a pretty good thread, free of politics and blind stupidity up until now).

Never mind that all three Australian car manufacturers had made up their mind to close up shop well before the Abbott government was elected to power - and Ford even made the announcement of their intentions before that election.

The decisions of the car makers were taken at a corporate level, outside of Australia, and were based on each company's interpretation of world competiveness and the size / capacity of the Australian market at the time - and had little, if anything at all to do with who was in government in Australia at the time (or who might / might not have been elected next time round - I don't think any of the car manufacturers had an accurate crystal ball at their disposal). These are undisputed and documented facts.

But some people never let the facts get in the way of their one eyed view of politics, and continue to dribble the same old garbage, even though it has been shown time and again for the garbage that it is.

The biggest problem that I see today are the so called "free trade agreements" and the supposed "level playing fields". It is patently obvious to blind freddy that the playing field is definitely NOT level, across a very broad range of industries. This has been the doing of governments of BOTH persuasions - and is likely to continue as a problem for some time to come - until someone in high places realizes that these agreements are to Australia's detriment and has the balls to do something about it. If you are stupid enough to start pointing the finger at any one party / government - the demise of the Australian car industry is said by many commentators to have started with the "Button Plan" - a bloody long time before the Abbott government was even thought of.

Originally Posted by incisor

If someone had $200m and they put that in something that returned $1200m in a couple of years, what would it be called?

The Mafia?

Originally Posted by LandyAndy

Re The Hecs debt.
Lindsay just did another xmas uni break working for a mining company.He gets paid very good money,pays plenty of tax.
He is still at uni,the break is his main money earner for the year.I said at least you will get all that tax back,no he says,the 3 month job puts him over the threshold and he gets Hecs debts taken out of his return despite not having completed his studies.
He also gets lower student payments from centrelink because I put too much into my super every fortnite.He doesnt live at home,hasnt done for 3 years.
Andrew

Originally Posted by Bytemrk

Andy,

I thought you didn't start paying hecs until you earned around $54k p.a

either that is some fair vacation job, or I've got my facts crooked....

Loan Repayment - Study Assist

Pretty sure that HECS re-payment is based on "annualised" earnings, and not "annual" earnings. Unless I'm mistaken, the "ability" to re-pay HECS would be based on your pay for an individual pay period, multiplied by the number of pay periods in a year to give a calculated "annualised" earnings - in much the same way that taxation liability is calculated each pay period.

For example, I only work occasionally these days, but when I do work I am still taxed in the top tax bracket. They take my weekly earnings and multiply it by 52 to arrive at an "annualised" figure, and then tax me on that basis. The fact that I no longer work anywhere near the 52 available weeks in the year means that I get a refund at the end of the financial year, when the tax that I have paid is assessed against the actual earnings over the full year.

I'm not sure if you can claim a refund on HECS fees paid on this basis (somehow I doubt it) - but it is definitely worth asking the question of a decent taxation accountant.

It's got me buggered why Lindsay's student payments are affected by your super contributions though Andrew. As he is no longer a "dependent" and you are not claiming anything for him, I can't see how your financial matters should affect his entitlements.

Google the "Australian Debt clock" for probably the real reason we are not in good shape .