Australia is ******

[hAyyoUinAU]

Something is wrong when my rent is almost one third of my salary. And I work hard. And a single father with three kids.
Not to mention the cost of electricity. (Which makes no sense, production costs got cheaper, it became more efficient, even electrical items, yet we pay more than ever)
And now water. It adds up and hurts when you have to sacrifice eating to make sure your kids have enough.
Then we have kids in our own country going hungry.
Wages have not increased along with inflation, they have stagnated.
Jobs have been created, but they are more and more part time. Full time jobs are on the decline. That means job security is also on the decline.
Having one trade is useless these days, you have to be able to adapt.
When I was a kid, we would come home from school and go out, and didn't have to come home till sun went down. And there were no mobile phones.
Now I can't even let my kids play out in the front yard unsupervised.

Even with all this, I do see positives, and have hope for this beautiful AMAZING country. Why? Because I have to. For my kids.

But it gets very hard sometimes. Especially when the realities are in your face everyday.

 

[Goldchaser1]

I hate this doom & gloom *****,this is still the lucky country,i proved it the last 6yrs,arrived in wa with the absolute shirt off my back,i had nothing,even had sold my detector to keep afloat,turned my whole life around,anyone can do it but you have to be prepaired to make sacrifices and bust ya arse,it wont happen sittin about crying hard done by.
Where resource rich and a bit isolated,so little old oz wants to take asia on in manufacturing i keep hearing,well the first step would be a wages drop to about $1 an hour,yep thats gonna go down well......

Yes. With hard work anything is possible. But there are a lot of factors, and for every success story, you have 20 failures. (NOT STATISTICAL)

Due to large populations in Asian countries, they can afford to do cheap labour. But China has a huge middle class now, and they don't work for peanuts. Manufacturing is now being sourced off shore by China, to countries with cheaper labour.

We are a lucky country, but I think its because we are a small country (population wise). But we are trying to grow too fast, and this is hurting us all.
I am lucky that my father chose to be an Auto Electrician, and we have a family business that is over 34years old. We have seen first hand what cheap manufacturing has done, and how it has affected what work we do and don't do anymore.
Starter Motor/Alternator rebuilds and repairs were our bread and butter for many years. Not anymore, its not cost effective due to cheap manufacturing.

Truth is, most customers want the cheap part, they can't afford the genuine one. And they couldn't care less who made it anymore.
Its like we kick ourselves in the head, and then wonder why we have a headache.

Agree with ya,im a budget concious consumer mostly,where in a global economy these days and sadly oz really is not in a position(geographically) to benefit in this new world,its very hard to spend double the price on local goods when some of the imports are actually similar quality these days......
34yrs and still going,thats pretty darn good

 

[silver]

They had to give africa back n made sure they wouldn't be able to be a united force didn't they.... then... when they realised they'd have to give australia back, they made sure our industries would be gone and.... boy... hav'nt they been ripping into our natural resources... getting as much out as quick as is possible in the time left available.
cripple all possibility of anyone becoming self reliant let alone a super power in their own right. It's just tactics, and they've had thousands of years to perfect them. Someone wants to control the world hey... look and ye shall not see.... want for anything left or right of a straight line and ye shall fight hard for your very air to breath easily. :| For us all to be truly free living in peace and harmony this road we trod into the future that not one of us built..... must of course be refathomed, reworked, and rebuilt... to lead us to our paradise imagined into reality. And many things from this road now, must be cast off along the way.

 

[HippyProspecting]

I understand this is a friday night bitch about the state of affair in Stralya. I have been guily of it myself from time to time but look on the bright side. We are on our computers complaining about how hard it is in this lucky country.

Imagine raising our children like this and telling them at night that everything will be fine in the morning

Goodnight all and happy prospecting

 

[silver]

Same problems... still can't find $h!t for the looking.

 

[Moneybox]

I can buy as quality item overseas ...have it posted to australia...for half the price an Australian company wants.....what does that tell ya..YOUR BEING RIPPED OFF. The only ones to blame are Australian companies increasing prices to fill their greedy pockets....

Smoky if you'd spent time and money on manufacture in Australia you may see it differently. I've spent most of my life manufacturing something, steel trawlers, concrete agitators, sand mining equipment, excavator buckets, vehicle bodies and for the last nearly twenty years automotive parts.

We were protected during the 70's and 80's by the tariff system. On several occasions we received a call from customs asking if a component can be manufactured here. If so they would hit the item with a high import tariff to support local industry. Then right up to the early 90's we had tax credits for research and development (R&D). These R&D tax credits encouraged Australian companies to develop and manufacture new components.That became unviable once those credits were withdrawn.

We manufactured almost all the components used in our right hand drive vehicle conversions from 1996 through to 2014. During 1996 we developed our first RHD steering box. It was a mirror image of the US made LHD Saginaw steering box. I sent our steering box to Saginaw and asked for a price to have them build a batch of 1000 for us. Their reply was "We build 3,000 to 5,000 LHD steering boxes a day and you're asking for a morning's work". I employed a full time pattern maker and we went ahead and manufactured our own parts.

As an example, we used to make the RHD steering pitman arm. 1, We make a prototype working part. 2, We carry out testing. 3, We produce CAD drawings. 4, We produce a wooden pattern. 5, After test casting we produce a plastic multi component casting pattern. 6, We cast a batch of 50 housings from 4140 chrome moly steel. 7, CNC machining of the housing and four internal components. 8, Case hardening. 9, Assembly. 10, Pricing, stocking etc. Our cost to produce this component was around $660 each. One batch would last about 1 year so that's many thousands of $ sitting on the shelf along with all the other components. I could buy the US manufactured LHD component for US$66 after their cost and markup.

The main problem is that our consumer market is too small to support the cost of manufacture of most things unless we are successful in exporting that item. Then it comes down to the exchange rate of the Australian $. Nobody can afford to buy what we manufacture.

We continued to manufacture steering boxes, steering racks, pedals, dashes and many other components subsidising our costs with money made in the distribution of genuine US made components. We were protected by an Australian dealer agreement with the US vehicle manufacturer. All was going well until the average Australian learned to purchase via the internet. We had to purchase our dealer stock from USA, pay the freight and stock a warehouse of parts then price them accordingly. In the end our clients would call for a quote then jump online and purchase from any US dealer and land the same part here cheaper than we could supply it.

The writing was on the wall so I closed the doors and went looking for gold

I like to buy local so last week I looked at a trailer jockey wheel at Trailer Parts for $60. I felt bad doing it but I bought an equivalent part online for $35 delivered

 

[user 7268]

Well I'm hearing ya MB ..................... when the aussie Boss doesn't have to cover leave loading, holiday pay, maternity leave, compassionate leave, sick pay, super contributions, work cover payments, pay roll tax, let you go home if it's to hot, let you go home if it's to cold plus let you go home even if you have a cold and I'll guarantee a another good few I've missed Yep aussie products will drop in price, but until then


Built another old rig up to donate to the Fraser Island salt this week ...................... needed a winch plate............. $45 posted and it weighs 9.5 kg. The snorkel was a costly $64 again despite it's size price posted :Y: Not sure where they are made but odds on bet it's not Australia Funnily enough the whole project owes me just on a $1000 on the road with rego, this made up of $500 vehicle and parts .................. the rest paperwork. ie Gov costs :|
Not a whinge or even a bitch .................... just simply it is what it is

Just a pic to lighten the moment ............................ and what inspires one to keep on keeping on :Y: To all the office bound ................... suffer :lol:

 

[Moneybox]

Bogger, that photo brings back some great memories and shows Australia is not yet F****. I went up Frazer in a Mazda Capella a few years (decades) back. I was pelting up the beach from Double Island Point in the dark and saw all the approaching head lights turning to my left. I thought they must have been taking a sand track. They weren't, they were going around a gutter, I went straight ahead, water up the windscreen and spewing out the top of the steering column into my lap. She never missed a beat, I swung a left and with the freshly washed windscreen got back on the beach.

We only got as far as Middle Rock and couldn't get the 2WD up the big sand dune but it was another of those great memorable trips. I built the 13 bus in my photo above, it was being loaded onto a truck in Balcatta WA heading for Frazer Island in the late 80's.

 

[user 7268]

MB .................. the wife relates well as she is always complaining that the water flowing down thru the heater fan drowns her feet Love the place but only on weekdays when the populations down
Those who haven't been need to get there as they are placing more and more restrictions as time goes on. I think the all wheel drive babies will be the next restriction ......... no ground clearance and they bog n clog up the interior tracks. The idiot factors not helping.

Here ya go MB not a Mazda capella but not bad for a petrol motor :Y: Also why I only spend a K on Fraser Vehicles .................. they rust for some strange reason
Love the roar from the snorkel when your pushing big cubes of water

 

[aussiefarmer]

Australia produces high quality long lasting goods , the problem there is the world has evolved into a throw away society . Now do we start making cheap junk to be competitive and risk our reputation of qaulity or do we stay strong and make long lasting goods ?
I feel we will never be competitive in small goods as india and china can pump them out , we need to consentrate more on making goods that people only want to buy for long service .
Our high wages will always have us behind the eightball for labour intensive goods.

Everything we do export simply needs to be value added /processed to the next step before it leaves our shores that is where Australian industry has a future.

We export alot of good when you do some research and all of them could have some level of processing done before they leave.

 

[Occasional_panner]

I mostly deal with chemicals and funnily enough, they are all made here in Aus, you can buy Chinese copies but they haven't got anywhere near the QC to be consistent, and most aren't approved.
So it certainly does make a lot of sense to pay extra for the better quality, proven results, backup from labs here in Aus if needed.

 

[Tathradj]

1999 I retired due to my family constraints.
Only lasted 6 months.
I now run a nice little IT business with 4 Subbies.
And we all make a Grand a week.
Payments are from over sea's and yes, I ensure that
there is a nice contribution to our monetary system.
That is my way of saying thank you for looking after us when
we did it freaking tough.
I hated the cash arriving every fortnight.
Pissed me off right fully.

 

[Bjay]

Totaly agree Aussie. We cant compete with the planned obselecence throw away goods on the market nowadays so we have to concentrate on high end quality product which people,companys will pay for. I work in a maintenance industry and some of the crap that customers have bought in the past and then expect us to try an fix is just wrong. This happened quite a bit about ten years ago but not so much now as I think theyve learned ther lesson and now dont mind paying for quality product. Mind you were not cheap but compared to oem were about half price and half delivery time which is more often than not the most important factor.

 

[Whisp]

We were doomed 43 years ago with "The Lima Declaration" something most people would have no idea even existed. Have a watch and a read if you are up for it.

[video=480,360]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPnKJUu07rE[/video]

http://www.ironbarkresources.com/articles/phillips20050300.htm

http://www.cirnow.com.au/what-is-the-lima-agreement/

Ok look, the right hand picture middle row (#8), it's that lovable chap George Soros, he who is single handedly responsible for the invasion of Europe by third world scum.

 

[Goldtarget]

Problem 1. Consumerism.
Problem 2. Banking system (and it's effect on debt/time ratio)
Problem 3. Import duty disparity vs locally made which leads to
Problem 4. Wages and conditions of Australian workers, cost pressures of resourcing Labour and overheads.
Problem 5. The 2 way transportation and integrated shipping. Resources offshore/import trade routes.

Solve all those and you'll be Aussie made, Aussie brought and Aussie bred.

We're a little rich island in a big big pond, and offense taken or not, if your living in a dream land where we aren't reliant on the globe and it's reliant on us then I can't help you. Aussie manufacturers will never compete at the cheapest level.

Buy Aussie where you can, sure. But if you can't change to fit the mold of the modern world you'll just end up angry and frustrated whilst missing many wonderful opportunities.

Competition for goods making is a race that's run and done. We will never compete. But that's a good thing. We stay wealthy and looked after because the cost of keeping you working honestly. Try taking on life (let alone work and its conditions) in most of the rest of the world. It's pretty ugly and labour is cheap. Manufacturing is cheap.

But let us be the best. The best at farming and fresh food production. The best scientists and doctors. The best tradesman and engineers. The best police officers and soilders. The best miners and clean energy producers. The best innovators and tech people. You get the picture.